


An Ever-Fixed Mark

by AMarguerite



Series: An Ever-Fixed Mark [2]
Category: Pride and Prejudice & Related Fandoms, Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
Genre: 19th Century Medicine, Battle Of Waterloo, Burn so slow it takes like six chapters to defrost first, Comedy, Deconstruction, Elizabeth Bennet/ Mud, F/F, F/M, Feminist Themes, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Mention of Surgery, Miscarriage, Napoleonic Wars, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Sexism, Pining, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Reaaaally slow burn, Regency, Regency Romance, Slow Burn, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, badass Elizabeth Bennet, battlefield descriptions, is the true OTP, medicine sure was fun before germ theory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-10
Updated: 2017-10-28
Packaged: 2018-08-30 06:56:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 19
Words: 190,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8523001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AMarguerite/pseuds/AMarguerite
Summary: One would think that having the name of one's soulmate appear on one's wrist on one's sixteenth birthday would make matrimony much less complicated. It mostly does not. And not at all for Miss Elizabeth Bennet of Longbourne. (A deconstruction of the "soulmate identifying mark" trope, using "Pride and Prejudice." Trigger warnings in the tags.)





	1. In which Mrs. Collins and Miss Bennet see each others' soulmarks

**Author's Note:**

> This whole universe brought to you by the Tim Minchin song, "If I Didn't Have You." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gaid72fqzNE (with thanks to pilferingapples, who first introduced me to the song)

There was such a cultural veil of secrecy drawn about one’s soulmark, that it was not until Miss Elizabeth Bennett visited Mrs. Charlotte Collins, née Lucas, in Kent that she saw Charlotte without a ribbon, glove, bracelet, or sleeve about her left wrist.

“It is blank,” said Elizabeth, all astonishment.

“Yes,” said Charlotte, studying her own wrist, “which is why I never claimed to be romantic.”

One mark of trust must be exchanged for another; Elizabeth unlaced the long sleeve of her gown and revealed the ‘Fitzwilliam’ emblazoned there.

“A rare name,” said Charlotte, thoughtfully. “And, I think, perhaps of the aristocracy. It has ever been the policy of the upper ten thousand to give their children unusual names, so that they will not be duped by another person’s soulmark. But then again, they can afford a worldwide search for their partner.”

This was very far from the more commonplace— and certainly more pragmatic —considerations of the landed gentry. It was their habit to pass about a mere handful of names, so that even if one did not marry the Henry or William one’s wrist had intended, one could assume one had, and live on in probable happiness.

“I have very little faith in this system,” said Elizabeth, studying the familiar copperplate letters. “Lydia, as I am sure you know, has a series of Chinese characters on her wrist, and Mary a cartouche full of Egyptian hieroglyphics. What can one do if one’s soul mate is halfway across the world, or died before the birth of Christ?”

“My father did try to make it out that I was freer than most, or perhaps had a soul mate from a culture with no written language,” said Charlotte, “but if I must be a philosopher, I must with Occam and agree that the simplest is the most likely. I have no soulmate. I do not particularly mind. Even with the names upon one’s wrist, there is to be considered whether it is a first or a last name, or perhaps even a middle name, or a nickname. It seems to me a hopeless business and I am glad to be out of it.”

“I wish I was,” said Elizabeth. “But that is why, I think, I am one of my mother’s least favored children. I came so very close to being an eligible _parti_ for someone of my own station. If only the ‘Fitz’ were dropped! A man will not ask for the hand of one whose wrist condemns him to being only partly suited.”

“You need not answer, but is Jane alone the only one...?”

“Kitty has a common name as well, but in that our gentrified ways have backfired. It is so common a name my mother lives in horror that Kitty will run off with an aptly named stablehand. Poor Lydia, at least, has the charm of doomed romance about her. My mother always feels so terribly sorry for her and indulges her past all bearing. Why Mary should not receive the same treatment is an unsolvable domestic mystery alongside ‘why does toast always land butter side down’ or ‘how did my embroidery thread tangle when it was perfect yesterday.’ Does Maria...?”

“She has a common name, thank God, and a disposition which will make any suitable marriage agreeable, as long as she is not frightened by her husband.”

“You needn't answer this either Charlotte, but how did Mr. Collins—” She paused and said, “I hope it will not distress you to know I have seen his soul mark. Indeed, I was forced to reveal mine to him before he understood I was perfectly serious on my refusals.”

“I fear that Eupraxtia has been dead nearly two centuries,” said Charlotte, good humoredly. “I suppose he heard you taking Greek with your father and assumed reincarnation somehow came into it.”

“Was that the case with you?”

“No, I have no Greek. He was merely ready to believe any woman a reincarnation of Eupraxia. My lack of soulmark, he insisted, was the proof of it. I had lived one life already, and, evidentially being reborn in Christ, was washed clean of all distinguishing marks.”

“Do you believe it?”

Charlotte hesitated and said, “I should like to. It was the first thing anyone told me that made me feel at all better about this—” gesturing at her left wrist “—and if it is not true, it brings Mr. Collins great comfort, and myself a great measure of freedom. To be thought the reincarnation of a Byzantine nun is a very mild price to pay in order to always have my own way in household matters.” Charlotte was still looking, almost absently, at Elizabeth’s inner wrist. “Fitzwilliam. The name seems to me familiar.”

“What, Fitzwilliam? I should hope not. I have been accustomed to think it a very ugly name now, and, for my part, would rather meet no Fitzwilliams at all.”

Charlotte’s expression cleared. “I am sorry I cannot spare you that, then; I have recalled where I have heard the name. Lady Catherine has a new visitor: her nephew, Colonel Fitzwilliam.”

Elizabeth started, colored, and was silent.

“It may be nothing,” said Charlotte, “but should you wish to secure your own establishment— which, I must assure you, is pleasant no matter the man one must live with, if he has been brought up a gentleman— it is as likely a chance as any.”

“Oh Charlotte, how dispassionately and strangely you talk,” said Elizabeth, still blushing. “When one has only a name to go on—”

“That is rather the point,” said Charlotte, dryly.

 

***  

 

Elizabeth had taken a much longer walk than usual, to quiet her nerves— an endeavor not in the least assisted by Charlotte, who kept remembering new information about Colonel Fitzwilliam and could not help but share it.

The facts of the case were not displeasing: Lady Catherine’s servants had nothing bad to say of him, except that he was so often riding or walking his boots were always muddy, and the village beauties could never decide between them if he was handsome or not. Their judgment shifted, it seemed, based on the proximity of Mr. Darcy.

“Do they find the Colonel more handsome by comparison?” Elizabeth asked impishly.

“Less, but then they find the Colonel’s manner more agreeable. He is every inch the gentleman, and very fond of music.” Charlotte said, consideringly, “Then, too, one must look at their respective situations in life. Mr. Darcy is master of Pemberley and commands ten thousand a year. He will always be considered handsome on that basis alone. Colonel Fitzwilliam is the son of the Earl of Matlock, but he is a second son. He has no establishment as of yet. Perhaps his wife might have a house in town, perhaps she would have to live under her father-in-law’s roof. But living in the household of an Earl would not, I think, be very unpleasant.”

“It depends on _his_ proximity to Lady Catherine, I imagine. But tell me Charlotte, has the Colonel sold out? He is in the army and not the militia, I think.”

“He is on leave for injuries sustained in Spain, where I believe his infantry regiment is currently stationed. I know your active disposition, Lizzy; you are half-hoping to follow the drum!”

“Indeed, I hope no such thing,” cried Elizabeth, blushing hotly. “I hope only that Lady Catherine’s dinners may be enlivened. When she condescended to inform us her nephews would be visiting her, I felt a chill enter the room. Her dinners only wanted Mr. Darcy’s censure to become a perfect horror.”

Maria then came running up the path, most distressed, having been spotted and sent on by Mr. Collins. The gentleman of Rosings Park were walking with Mr. Collins, on their way to call on the Parsonage— an honor Mr. Collins dare not have hoped! But they must make haste, the Colonel and Mr. Darcy were almost upon them, and, indeed, might reach the Parsonage before them.

“I make thank you, Eliza, for this piece of civility,” said Charlotte. “I was merely speculating before but I begin to think Colonel Fitzwilliam's soulmark must be a match to your own. Otherwise, why such haste to call upon us?”

“We know it cannot be of Mr. Darcy's devising,” said Elizabeth. “You have seen too well with what difficulty we exist in the same room. I think you overestimate the charms of everyone involved— both Rosings and myself.”

But Elizabeth dimly suspected Charlotte was right, at the very searching look Colonel Fitzwilliam turned on her when Mr. Collins announced her as “Miss Elizabeth Bennet.” The colonel was about thirty, and certainly not as handsome as his cousin, but Elizabeth did not find his looks displeasing. Indeed, she thought he smiled with unexpected charm.

“I have been particularly wishing to make your acquaintance, Miss Bennet—” in the corner of her eye, she saw Mr. Darcy start at this, or perhaps the emphasis the Colonel had put upon her name— “for I have heard that you play and sing, and both very well.”

“A little and not very well,” protested Elizabeth, as they sat. “I suppose you have only Mrs. Collins’s testimony— really, Charlotte, you do make me wish my vanity had taken a musical turn. I know enough only to hear how far I am from a true proficient.”

“Ah, Miss Bennet,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam, “I have heard other reports that you play with great feeling. I hope you might play at Rosings after dinner some evening. Nobody plays or sings there. I always feel as I have been immured in one of those continental monasteries where all the brothers take a vow of silence. It is very Gothic. It wants only the servants locking each other in closets at inconvenient moments.”

“You read Mrs. Radcliffe?” asked Elizabeth, a little surprised. “I confess, my favorite author is Miss Burney— or I believe she is now Madame d’Arbley— but I quite drove all four of my sisters to distraction by leaving our copy of _The Mysteries of Udolpho_ at Charlotte’s before we discovered whether or not Laurentina’s skeleton lurked behind the curtain!”

Colonel Fitzwilliam entered into conversation directly with the readiness and ease of a well-bred man, and talked very pleasantly of books and music; but his cousin, after having addressed a slight observation on the house and garden to Mrs. Collins, sat for some time without speaking to anybody. At length, however, his civility was so far awakened as to inquire of Elizabeth after the health of her family. She answered him in the usual way, and after a moment’s pause, added:

“My eldest sister has been in town these three months. Have you never happened to see her there?”

She was perfectly sensible that he never had; but she wished to see whether he would betray any consciousness of what had passed between the Bingleys and Jane, and she thought he looked a little confused as he answered that he had never been so fortunate as to meet Miss Bennet.

In this, however, he had an inadvertent savior— Colonel Fitzwilliam, with the air of one referencing some private joke, smiled at his cousin, and assured the room he would most assuredly have known if Darcy ever met anyone by the name of Bennet while in town. There was a formal agreement on that head.

“Ah,” said Elizabeth, not quite done provoking Mr. Darcy, “then you have heard reports of my talent from Mr. Darcy! Do you so trust the gentleman’s reports as to praise me before hearing me?”

“I must,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam. “He is such a great tall fellow I am inclined to believe the least of his pronouncements. But, yes, I do. We grew up together, and he is as scrupulous a truth-teller now as he was then.” Elizabeth was interested to hear that though the Earl of Marlock's estate, where Colonel Fitzwilliam had grown up, was in Hampshire, he had spent at least part of every summer in Derbyshire, near Lambton, a town she held in considerable affection since it had provided her with her favorite aunt.

Mr. Darcy abruptly turned from Mr. Collins to interrupt one of Colonel Fitzwilliam’s recollections of Lambton with, “Richard, you know very well the horse chestnut tree on the green had a blight and never fruited? I was obliged to have it cut down and replaced last summer.”

“Surely not! I recall gathering the chestnuts—”

“On the green? Come now. How on earth do you remember where you are in Spain, if you cannot remember even the topography of Derbyshire?”

Colonel Fitzwilliam laughed. “I have been a little more recently in Spain than Derbyshire! Consider, too, that I have maps with which to aid my memory. If you had provided me a map of all the horse chestnut trees that supplied us with ammunition for conkers, I should have a more perfect recall.”

Elizabeth leaned forward and asked, in mock seriousness, if his tactics for that game had changed during his years on the Peninsula, and they discussed conkers strategy with such an overblown solemnity, Mr. Collins become convinced conkers was as difficult and intellectual a game as chess. Mr. Darcy frequently interrupted to correct them on some point or other. Elizabeth was more impressed with the Colonel’s good humor and easy tolerance in the face of this than Mr. Darcy’s encyclopedic knowledge of the Derbyshire horse chestnut. But it seemed to her very fitting that where Colonel Fitzwilliam took pleasure in an extended joke— the kind which Elizabeth had always enjoyed with her father— Mr. Darcy took pleasure only in being right.

 

***

Colonel Fitzwilliam’s manners were much admired at the Parsonage. Charlotte went so far as to end their session of mutual approbation with the remark, “I notice he has your humor, Eliza. He equally delights in the ridiculous. I do not know how you kept your countenance when you asked him the strategic benefit of an underhand conker strike. I scarcely did.”

“I know, you seemed to me far too serious,” said Elizabeth.

“You will never convince me you had so long a conversation on conkers just to amuse me.”

“Yes, I am a selfish creature and did it purely to amuse myself.”

“Lizzy—”

“I am no flirt,” Elizabeth protested. “You must not be suspecting romantic overtures in everything I say or do.”

Maria came presently into the room, and, as so private a conversation could not be got into before a girl who had been in possession of her soulmark only a sixmonth, they somewhat hastily changed the subject. In all innocence Maria changed it back from the probable health of the sow’s next litter to the new visitors. Mr. Darcy frightened her just as much as ever, but she liked the Colonel. He had treated her very kindly, when he was not talking with Elizabeth, and when she saw him in the lane that morning, he had inquired  after Mrs. Collins and particularly after Miss Bennet. A little artful questioning on Charlotte’s part caused Maria to repeat nearly the whole of this part of her conversation with the Colonel, which was not extensive. Upon hearing how well Maria had liked having Elizabeth as a traveling companion, he had inquired more particularly on why this was so, and Elizabeth’s general habits and humor, and seemed very pleased with Maria’s answers.

Elizabeth maintained this was only polite conversation— or at least, did so, until she happened to run into the Colonel the next morning, on her usual morning ramble in the park. He was everything easy and amiable, and eager to join her on her walk. Indeed, Elizabeth was reminded by her early pleasure in his company, as well as by his evident admiration of her, of her former favourite George Wickham; and though, in comparing them, she saw there was less captivating softness in Colonel Fitzwilliam’s manners, she believed he might have the best informed mind.  

The conversation ranged more widely than ever it had with Mr. Wickham, and was so interesting she found she had walked nearly an hour in his company without being the least conscious of the time passing.

“I am afraid I have kept you too long,” said the colonel, when he saw they had managed to walk nearly to Rosings. “Would you care to come inside for tea before I return you to your friends?”

At Elizabeth’s hesitation he laughed and said, “I am sorry to have threatened you with tea at all. It was pure selfishness on my part; there is a great deal of conversation at Rosings, but all of it is Lady Catherine’s. I find it remarkably easy to converse with you and do not wish to stop yet.”

“Yes, I imagine an exchange of ideas might be....”

“Rare,” suggested Colonel Fitzwilliam, offering her his arm. Elizabeth took it, for it was, after all, a longer walk back, though she did not feel in the least tired. “‘Refreshing’ would be as apt. And I get very little support from my cousins. Anne is too used to her mother’s style of talking to realize a conversation requires more than one speaker, and though Darcy is lively enough in other places, and in other company, he is uncommonly stupid just now. I can scarce get two sentences out of him, and they are rarely more than non-sequiturs.”

“You shall receive no pity from me,” said Elizabeth. “I once suffered through three days of your cousin Darcy’s company in the same house in Hertfordshire. We had... one conversation, I believe, and the rest of the time he sat reading silently.”

“Indeed? I am not surprised. He has very few resources when he is ill at ease.”

“It does not strike me as a family characteristic.”

Colonel Fitzwilliam laughed again. “I shall take that as a compliment to myself. But I must contradict you on that point— his sister Georgiana is very like.”

“I understand from Lady Catherine you share her guardianship?”

“Indeed, yes,” and the rest of their conversation was spent sketching out the various webs of familial relationships which undergirded their lives. Elizabeth was amused to hear that he was likewise a second child with younger sisters, though his own childhood, spent at estates Elizabeth could only have toured under a housekeeper’s close watch, was far different from hers. Still, when they parted, she found herself thinking that they still had more in common than not.

The next day brought no morning visitors, despite Charlotte’s predictions, though the day after brought both Colonel Fitzwilliam and Mr. Darcy. The colonel’s own preference for Elizabeth’s company was marked, and though she was flattered by it, she was still inclined to consider this boredom, not any sign his wrist might read “Elizabeth” or “Bennet.” Mr. Darcy’s motives for visiting again, and so early in his stay at Rosings, were less easy to understand. Even compared to his behavior in Meryton he was taciturn. He seldom opened his mouth and when he did speak, it seemed the effect of necessity rather than of choice—a sacrifice to propriety, not a pleasure to himself. Elizabeth was inclined to think his visit proceeded from the difficulty of finding anything to do, which was the more probable from the time of year. All field sports were over. Within doors there was Lady Catherine, books, and a billiard-table, but gentlemen cannot always be within doors, and from the jokes Colonel Fitzwilliam made, it seemed that Mr. Darcy had no other friends in the county. Where Colonel Fitzwilliam went, so too, did Mr. Darcy, in a cloud of boredom and disapproval.

This was likewise Elizabeth's explanation for why Mr. Darcy was so often staring at her.

Charlotte took an oddly romantical view and insisted it was proof of her conjectures. Mr. Darcy looked so often at Elizabeth to better see if she was a fit match for his cousin. There were many Elizabeths in the world, and many Bennets. It was only natural to be suspicious and look for proof. It went in some way to explain his odd behavior towards her in Hertfordshire.

Elizabeth laughed at this. “Charlotte! You had it that my name was written on _Mr. Darcy’s_ wrist, when we were in Hertfordshire. I begin to distrust your judgment.”

“Ah, but then I did not know your soulmark read ‘Fitzwilliam,’ not Darcy, or whatever Mr. Darcy’s Christian name might be. If Mr. Darcy and the Colonel are truly as close as they have intimated, he must know his cousin’s soulmark. If he was uncertain whether or not you were indeed meant for his cousin it would go a long way to his habit of listening to your conversations, staring at you, and singling you out to dance.”

Charlotte would have been happy to see either theory proved, but it began to look more and more likely it was the Colonel for whom Elizabeth was intended. He visited every other day the first week of his visit, and his attentions towards Elizabeth during dinners at Rosings were too marked to be made out of boredom. Indeed, Charlotte had overheard the Rosings parlor maid gossiping with the Parsonage cook that it wasn’t like the Colonel to be raising Miss Bennet’s expectations when it must end in disappointment, and the cook arguing in return that in all his years of visiting Rosings, the Colonel had never struck her as the sort to trifle with a woman at all, let alone out of boredom.

Mr. Darcy certainly looked at her friend a great deal, but the expression of that look was disputable. It was an earnest, steadfast gaze, but she often doubted whether there were much admiration in it, and sometimes it seemed nothing but absence of mind.

 

***

Though they very often saw the colonel, and— a little less often, Mr. Darcy— they did not see Lady Catherine for a week entire. It was not until Easter-day, almost a week after the gentlemen’s arrival, that they were honoured by such an attention, and then they were merely asked on leaving church to come there in the evening.

The invitation was accepted of course, and at a proper hour they joined the party in Lady Catherine’s drawing-room. Her ladyship received them civilly, but it was plain that their company was by no means so acceptable as when she could get nobody else; and she was, in fact, almost engrossed by her nephews, speaking to them, especially to Darcy, much more than to any other person in the room.

Colonel Fitzwilliam seemed really glad to see them (“Anything,” said Elizabeth to Charlotte, “comes as a welcome relief to him at Rosings!”) and it was obvious even to Mr. Collins that Mrs. Collins’s pretty friend had caught the colonel’s fancy very much. He seated himself by her, and talked so agreeably of Kent and Hertfordshire, of travelling and staying at home, of new books and music, that Elizabeth had never been half so well entertained in that room before; and they conversed with so much spirit and flow, as to draw the attention of Lady Catherine herself, as well as of Mr. Darcy. His eyes had been soon and repeatedly turned towards them with a look of curiosity; and that her ladyship, after a while, shared the feeling, was more openly acknowledged, for she did not scruple to call out:

“What is that you are saying, Fitzwilliam? What is it you are talking of? What are you telling Miss Bennet? Let me hear what it is.”

“We are speaking of music, madam,” said he, when no longer able to avoid a reply.

“Of music! Then pray speak aloud. It is of all subjects my delight. I must have my share in the conversation if you are speaking of music. There are few people in England, I suppose, who have more true enjoyment of music than myself, or a better natural taste. If I had ever learnt, I should have been a great proficient. And so would Anne, if her health had allowed her to apply. I am confident that she would have performed delightfully. How does Georgiana get on, Darcy?”

Mr. Darcy spoke with affectionate praise of his sister’s proficiency.

“I am very glad to hear such a good account of her,” said Lady Catherine, “and pray tell her from me, that she cannot expect to excel if she does not practice a good deal.”

“I assure you, madam,” he replied, “that she does not need such advice. She practises very constantly.”

“So much the better. It cannot be done too much; and when I next write to her, I shall charge her not to neglect it on any account. I often tell young ladies that no excellence in music is to be acquired without constant practice. I have told Miss Bennet several times, that she will never play really well unless she practises more; and though Mrs. Collins has no instrument, she is very welcome, as I have often told her, to come to Rosings every day, and play on the pianoforte in Mrs. Jenkinson’s room. She would be in nobody’s way, you know, in that part of the house.”

Mr. Darcy looked a little ashamed of his aunt’s ill-breeding, and made no answer. Colonel Fitzwilliam did not bother to hide his wince, but Elizabeth said, when Lady Catherine was distracted by Mr. Collins’s latest panegyric on her taste and judgement, “You needn’t apologize— it will provoke me into apologizing for my relations—” with a quick look at Mr. Collins “—and then we shall never talk of anything else.”

Colonel Fitzwilliam looked less conscious, and reminded Elizabeth she had promised to play for him; and she sat down directly to the instrument. He drew a chair near her. Lady Catherine listened to half a song, and then talked, as before, to her other nephew; till the latter walked away from her, and making with his usual deliberation towards the pianoforte stationed himself so as to command a full view of the performer and page turner. Elizabeth saw what he was doing, and at the first convenient pause, turned to him with an arch smile, and said:

“You mean to frighten me, Mr. Darcy, by coming in all this state to hear me? I will not be alarmed though your sister does play so well. There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me.”

“I shall not say you are mistaken,” he replied, “because you could not really believe me to entertain any design of alarming you; and I have had the pleasure of your acquaintance long enough to know that you find great enjoyment in occasionally professing opinions which in fact are not your own.”

Elizabeth laughed heartily at this picture of herself, and said to Colonel Fitzwilliam, “Your cousin will give you a very pretty notion of me, and teach you not to believe a word I say. I am particularly unlucky in meeting with a person so able to expose my real character, in a part of the world where I had hoped to pass myself off with some degree of credit. Indeed, Mr. Darcy, it is very ungenerous in you to mention all that you knew to my disadvantage in Hertfordshire—and, give me leave to say, very impolitic too—for it is provoking me to retaliate, and such things may come out as will shock your relations to hear.”

“I am not afraid of you,” said he, smilingly.

“Pray let me hear what you have to accuse him of,” cried Colonel Fitzwilliam. “I should like to know how he behaves among strangers. Your previous account diverted me to no end.”

“Previous account?” asked Mr. Darcy.

“Ah, but I did not reveal the worst,” said Elizabeth, ignoring this interjection. “Colonel Fitzwilliam, I must ask you to prepare yourself for something very dreadful. The first time of my ever seeing him in Hertfordshire, you must know, was at a ball—and at this ball, what do you think he did? He danced only four dances, though gentlemen were scarce; and, to my certain knowledge, more than one young lady was sitting down in want of a partner. Mr. Darcy, you cannot deny the fact.”

“I had not at that time the honour of knowing any lady in the assembly beyond my own party.”

“True; and nobody can ever be introduced in a ball-room. Well, Colonel Fitzwilliam, what do I play next? My fingers wait your orders.”

“Perhaps,” said Darcy, “I should have judged better, had I sought an introduction; but I am ill-qualified to recommend myself to strangers.”

“Shall we ask your cousin the reason of this?” said Elizabeth, still addressing Colonel Fitzwilliam. “Shall we ask him why a man of sense and education, and who has lived in the world, is ill qualified to recommend himself to strangers?”

“I can answer your question,” said Fitzwilliam, “without applying to him. It is because he will not give himself the trouble.”

“I certainly have not the talent which some people possess,” said Darcy, “of conversing easily with those I have never seen before. I cannot catch their tone of conversation, or appear interested in their concerns, as I often see done.”

“My fingers,” said Elizabeth, “do not move over this instrument in the masterly manner which I see so many women’s do. They have not the same force or rapidity, and do not produce the same expression. But then I have always supposed it to be my own fault—because I will not take the trouble of practising. It is not that I do not believe my fingers as capable as any other woman’s of superior execution.”

Darcy smiled and said, “You are perfectly right. You have employed your time much better. No one admitted to the privilege of hearing you can think anything wanting. We neither of us perform to strangers.”

Here they were interrupted by Lady Catherine, who called out to know what they were talking of. Elizabeth immediately began playing again. Lady Catherine approached, and, after listening for a few minutes, said to Darcy:

“Miss Bennet would not play at all amiss if she practised more, and could have the advantage of a London master. She has a very good notion of fingering, though her taste is not equal to Anne’s. Anne would have been a delightful performer, had her health allowed her to learn.”

Elizabeth looked at Darcy to see how cordially he assented to his cousin’s praise; but neither at that moment nor at any other could she discern any symptom of love; and from the whole of his behaviour to Miss de Bourgh she derived this comfort for Miss Bingley, that he might have been just as likely to marry her, had she been his relation. She began to think Charlotte’s conjectures entirely wrong. If Lady Catherine so searched for praise of Anne from Darcy, then Darcy could not have shown his soulmark to anyone. He seemed the sort who might never do so. If he did not, then it was unlikely anyone—even a much beloved cousin— would reveal his soulmark in turn. Mr. Darcy had behaved oddly to her because he did not care to try and behave with courtesy, and Colonel Fitzwilliam—

That could not be satisfactorily worked out, as of yet. Perhaps he liked her, or perhaps he was merely as bored as she believed him to be. But his manner was so friendly, and his attentions so marked, and her own satisfaction in being with him was already so deeply felt—

Lady Catherine continued her remarks on Elizabeth’s performance, mixing with them many instructions on execution and taste, and Elizabeth, glad of some distraction, tried to keep up with the torrent of opinions. At the request of the gentlemen, she remained at the instrument till her ladyship’s carriage was ready to take them all home. If that night, in bed, she stared at her bare wrist more often than was her wont, she blamed it on fatigue, or the same absence of mind which Charlotte had earlier ascribed to Mr. Darcy.


	2. In which Darcy is exceedingly awkward

Nearly a fortnight passed without bringing further clarity. Elizabeth fell in the habit of meeting Colonel Fitzwilliam on her walks on the days he did not call, but, while enjoying their increased intimacy, did not know what, if anything, their friendliness had to do with the mark on her wrist. She liked him very much indeed, but had little faith in the whole notion of soul marks after Charlotte’s revelations.

As she often did in times of struggle, Elizabeth turned to Jane. Elizabeth's letter was brief and much crossed-out but managed to convey that Elizabeth thought Colonel Fitzwilliam (his last name thrice underlined), whom she had earlier mentioned, seemed very much the gentleman. She had known him only two weeks so it was impossible to tell [ink blot] [ink blot], she hoped all was well, love from Lizzy.

It was not a satisfactory letter, and Elizabeth did not feel entirely comfortable sending it when Jane must nightly see ‘Charles’ traced over her veins, and daily fail to see Charles Bingley. But, Elizabeth argued with herself, how hurt would Jane be, if something did come of it and Jane did not know— but it was too soon, really, and Charlotte was forever urging one to commit to a course before even considering all options—

With a sigh born more of irritation than melancholy, she undid the ribbon around her wrist that was _de rigeur_ daywear between Easter and Michaelmas, and studied the ‘Fitzwilliam’ there. It had not changed. And it was an unusual name. Perhaps it _was_ Colonel Fitzwilliam? Their tastes were so similar, their conversation so easy, their sense of the ridiculous so equally lively— but, then again, it was a family name. What if she was meant for some other member of his family? Or what if—

She was so absorbed in these speculations, she quite failed to hear the bell, or even the door when it opened to reveal Mr. Darcy, and Mr. Darcy alone.

Elizabeth sprang to her feet and hid her letter under the rest of the paper that she might escape all impertinent questions— before realizing that in doing so, she had opened herself up to a line of inquiry yet more mortifying. She had not put back on her ribbon before tidying her desk.

“Mr. Darcy!” she exclaimed, hastily hiding her left hand behind her back. “I did not— you are— I beg your pardon, I did not hear the bell.”

He seemed fixed to the spot, staring at her writing desk, but at the sound of her voice, came to himself and apologized for his intrusion. He had understood that all the ladies were within.

“As you see, sir,” said Elizabeth, her face flaming, “it is only me. I was— I was engaged in writing a letter and my ribbon— it—”

“Trailed in the ink, I expect,” said Mr. Darcy, awkwardly. “My sister complains of that. Perhaps a bracelet.”

“I— yes, thank you. I shall— I shall take that into consideration, in future.”

There fell a very awkward pause. Elizabeth was on the point of asking what he had seen, when he hurriedly sat down and said, with an air of patent desperation, that the weather was continuing fine.

“Indeed,” agreed Elizabeth, sitting awkwardly, with her hand still behind her back. “Very, er, very temperate.”

Mr. Darcy was at such a loss of what to do he forced a conversation on the interior decoration of the parsonage. “This seems a very comfortable house. Lady Catherine, I believe, did a great deal to it when Mr. Collins first came to Hunsford.”

“I believe she did—and I am sure she could not have bestowed her kindness on a more grateful object.”

“Mr. Collins appears to be very fortunate in his choice of a wife.”

Elizabeth managed a taut smile.

Mr. Darcy persisted, desperately, “It must be very agreeable for her to be settled within so easy a distance of her own family and friends.”

“It is nearly fifty miles.”

“And what is fifty miles of good road? Little more than half a day’s journey. Yes, I call it a very easy distance.”

“I should never have considered the distance as one of the advantages of the match,” cried Elizabeth, whose shoulder was beginning to pain her. “I should never have said Mrs. Collins was settled near her family.”

“It is a proof of your own attachment to Hertfordshire. Anything beyond the very neighbourhood of Longbourn, I suppose, would appear far.”

As he spoke there was a sort of smile which Elizabeth fancied she understood; he must be supposing her to be thinking of Jane and Netherfield, and she blushed as she answered: “I do not mean to say that a woman may not be settled too near her family. The far and the near must be relative, and depend on many varying circumstances. Where there is fortune to make the expenses of travelling unimportant, distance becomes no evil. But that is not the case here. Mr. and Mrs. Collins have a comfortable income, but not such a one as will allow of frequent journeys—and I am persuaded my friend would not call herself near her family under less than half the present distance.”

Mr. Darcy drew his chair a little towards her, and said, “You cannot have a right to such very strong local attachment. You cannot have been always at Longbourn.”

Elizabeth looked surprised. This seemed to remind Mr. Darcy of how he had earlier surprised her, and he grew embarrassed. He drew back his chair, took a newspaper from the table, and hiding his face in its pages, asked, “Perhaps, Miss Bennet, you might wish to put on—”

“Er, yes, I thank you.” She very hastily did up the ribbon and only managed to tie it when Charlotte and her sister returned from their walk. The tete-a-tete surprised them. Mr. Darcy related the mistake which had occasioned his intruding on Miss Bennet, and after sitting a few minutes longer without saying much to anybody, went away.

“Mr. Darcy’s visits grow more and more inexplicable,” said Charlotte, to which Maria was happy to agree, before begging to be allowed to go out and look at the new piglets.

“I may at least explain why he left so suddenly,” said Elizabeth, still flushed and mortified. “I was writing to Jane and I— it is not always comfortable to have on the ribbon, and I did not hear him enter—”

“Good God!” cried Charlotte. “And did he—”

“I have no idea if he saw,” said Elizabeth miserably.

“Where was he?”

They restaged Mr. Darcy’s entrance (Elizabeth was at first unwilling to take off her ribbon again, until Charlotte informed the housekeeper that they were not at home to visitors) and Charlotte thought that, unless he had exceptionally good eyesight, all he could possibly see was the beginning ‘F.’

“Which could be any number of names,” said Charlotte, pragmatically. “And even if he did guess rightly, or read it in its entirety, I think Mr. Darcy stands a little too much on his dignity to say anything.” Then, after a moment, she added, “If you were of a mind to secure him, you could put out that you were compromised by his seeing—”

“Charlotte! When he could very well have seen it was ‘Fitzwilliam’ written there? If he does not continue to pretend as if nothing happened, I expect him to go immediately to his cousin and accuse me of being the most shameless flirt to ever make herself look ridiculous!”

But this was not the case.

When Elizabeth stormed out on her usual walk the colonel was greatly surprised to see her in ill temper and begged to know if he needed to meet anyone at dawn on her behalf.

She managed a smile and said only, “I am merely embarrassed— your cousin surprised me this morning when I thought myself at home alone.”

“I hope he did not startle you unduly.”

“No— but he—” she blushed again and gestured vaguely to her left wrist. “My ribbon was— I had no notion anyone would arrive—”

“Oh!” The colonel looked at her wrist a moment and then said, cautiously, “Darcy is not the sort of man who talks. I have never seen his soul mark; indeed, I doubt his own sister knows the name written there. He will hardly bandy yours about.”

“Are you quite sure? It is— it is an unusual one. It is hardly a name one would hear in a melodrama on Drury Lane, but as far as an English name goes, it is out of the ordinary.”

Colonel Fitzwilliam smiled. “And one that Darcy— but I go too far ahead of myself there, I think. Believe me, Miss Bennet, even if he did read it in its entirety, and think it odd, or in some way worthy of notice of censure, there would be no cause for alarm. Darcy would be too embarrassed to mention or act on it. He accidentally saw mine when I was just come from Spain, and getting my bandages changed. I have known Darcy all my life and I do not think he was ever more awkward. I tried to joke him out of it, but was largely unsuccessful; he could not look me in the face for nearly a week.”

Elizabeth secretly hoped she would not have to force conversation with Mr. Darcy for a week, but doubted it would all so shake out in her favor.

“With one thing and another I was feeling out of sorts and tried to joke him out of the mood, but it really is better to let Darcy go off and do something to relieve his feelings before forcing him to be conversational. As soon as he was allowed to do that, he was the soul of courtesy. He assured me that matters were not as dark as I seemed to perceive them, and that he had, in fact, met multiple people-- multiple young women, even-- bearing the name on my wrist. He doubted any of them were a perfect match, and had further doubts as to whether or not the people he knew were-- er, the point of my rambling aside, Miss Bennet, is that it was actually quite a comfort to have someone else know of so personal a struggle, and to have them offer assistance, and a little hope.”

Elizabeth recalled that mention had been made of a formal agreement on Bennets in town, and blushed. She did not know, yet, whether or not she liked this idea. She could well guess at the objections Mr. Darcy (no doubt spurred on by Miss Bingley) could have made; what doubts he entertained as to her, or any of her sisters’ suitability for his cousin.

Colonel Fitzwiliam was, by now, familiar with most of her moods, and could see his assurances had mostly served to confuse and distress her. He hastily changed the subject. “It is an odd thing, a soul mark. Everyone tries to circumvent the system if they can— I believe it was the French aristocracy which began the habit of saddling their child with every possible name in the hopes of increasing their matrimonial prospects thereby, but I do sincerely believe it is possible to find the person for whom you are designed.”

Elizabeth did not know what to think, and, unsure what he was intimating, said, “It is so easy to be mistaken. I hope we are not good enough friends that I can admit to you that though my mother and my father bear each other’s names, they are hardly well-matched. I have daily proof that one can be lead astray out of desire to adhere to so arbitrary a system as soulmarks. Real affection vanished forever when my father became truly acquainted with my mother’s character. I think she does still believe she and my father are soulmates, but— but I cannot think they are, if respect, esteem, and confidence does not exist between them.”

“Too soon,” murmured Colonel Fitzwilliam, but at her quizzical look, explained, “I mean, it is possible that one can act too soon out of excitement or relief at finding a matching name. But where there is commonality of taste, feeling, and thought established, I do not think it is easy to mistake matters.”

“I do not mean to entirely set myself up in opposition to soulmarks,” said Elizabeth, considering. “Indeed, I do not think it entirely impossible that one should find a soulmate. My aunt and uncle on my mother’s side are well matched. They bear each other’s names, and are very sincerely happy, but it— it is far more perplexing than any system designed for the continuance of mankind has any right to be.”  

“Yes. We shall have to petition the Almighty. But hopefully we shall have no chance, as yet, to do so.” He said, after a moment, “It is a system too, which the unscrupulous have well learnt to exploit. Everyone is desperate enough, at one time of life or another, to stop thinking rationally. People can be easily persuaded to act against their own self-interest in such a state, to believe true things that could be easily proven false with a little work. A lady of my acquaintance was nearly taken in, in such a way. She was very young, too young for her mark to yet appear, and so it... well. It could have ended much worse than it did. Her relations managed to intervene in time, but I had not much faith in soulmarks after that.”

This subject seemed painful, so Elizabeth tried to change the subject. “Colonel Fitzwilliam, I think I have caught you in an inconsistency. Just five minutes previous you were so vehemently exhorting me to believe in soulmates, and now you tell me you have no faith in our system for finding them at all.”

“No, no,” said he, attempting to rally, “it is not inconsistency but nuance. The system is generally maddening, and unfortunately exploited by the unscrupulous, but I do not think it does not work _at all_. I never managed to doubt that I had a soulmate somewhere, despite all my attempts at reasoning myself out of it— only that I should ever find that person.”

“You are cruel to deny me a flaw and instead present a virtue! I meant to tease you on your faithlessness, but instead you give me faith.”

“I am sorry to deny you amusement, but I should hope that aspect of my character gives you greater pleasure than a laugh might.”

This was said quite seriously, and not entirely in keeping with the light, teasing tone which they had adopted with one another. Elizabeth agreed, in the same tone, before realizing she was more affected than she meant to be. She hastily said, “So, in short, we have been so led astray by rhetoric that we did not realize we fully agreed with each other! Aristotle ought to be stricken from the curriculum, if we managed to so muddy the point by adhering to his teachings.”

There then followed a much less dangerous conversation about their educations, which had been pretty similar, with one or two notable exceptions. As there had been no governess, Elizabeth’s parents had been her primary teachers, when there had not been a master of the subject in the village; and as her mother's education had been scanty, Elizabeth had learnt the most from her father. He, in turn, had educated her as he had been— more, it had to be admitted, to provide himself with an intellectual companion than to prepare her for her future life. Indeed, Elizabeth found her Latin much superior to the colonel’s, as he slid into Spanish when he wished to make a point more rapidly than his recollection of Latin conjugations would allow. The difference between soldiering and housekeeping was great enough to amuse them for some time. It also provided the flaw which their earlier conversation had denied:

“I have carried over the army’s bad habits to civilian life,” said the colonel, absently scything some weeds with his walking stick. “When someone insists upon their own way I settle in for a good old army grouse, as we call it, with whoever will listen, but I do not disobey, even if it makes me thoroughly unhappy. It allows me to indulge in I think a worse habit from the army: an insistence on assigning blame for failure on everything but myself. The worst of it is, I never realize I am doing it until I have so thoroughly absolved myself the failure is some months behind me.”

“The first I can well believe but you cannot convince me of your irresponsibility.”

“Oh no, I take responsibility, and very ostentatiously too, for any actions with a favorable outcome. If pressed on why I was wounded I am perhaps overproud to declare my regiment seized a number of canons when the French abandoned Madrid. But if you asked me how I happened to be wounded, as Mrs. Fielding did in the village yesterday, I lay blame first on the canon, which was spiked, and then on the French gunners, who fired so rapidly the canon was too hot to be safely spiked, and then on the French gunsmiths and foundrymen, who did not appear to have constructed their guns to well withstand spiking after a day-long battery. I have never once blamed myself for being so smug in victory I went to personally take charge of one of the canons and had it explode quite nearly in my face.”

“Were you very badly injured?”

“It was an injury more inconvenient than dangerous. Despite my folly in dismounting my horse, I did not make it very far, and I had enough instinct to throw up my arms to protect myself. What bits of iron the regimental chirguin could not remove, my father's physician on Harley Street did. I had some use of my arms—not enough to ride, write, or fight at length, which comprise the majority of my duties on campaign. I complain, but I feel keenly my luck, and have enjoyed my indolence far more than I ought.”

“I do not accept this as proof,” said Elizabeth. “You say you will give me flaws and continue on with virtues. Next you shall say to me, ‘Miss Bennet, I was stupid enough to rescue two golden haired orphans and fail to give them cakes.’”

He laughed and said, “I am perfectly in earnest, though I shall by no means beg you to stop thinking well of me, if you are determined to do so.” But he soon grew serious once more. “I suppose I must offer up the young lady of my acquaintance again— I knew her well enough to think that, due to her circumstances and upbringing, something of the sort might very well happen to her, but while on campaign, I abdicated my responsibility for her onto other people and contented myself with occasionally asking about her welfare in correspondence from Spain. It had always crossed my mind that her disposition was so shy and retiring, and her fear of a London season so clear, that she could easily fall prey to a fortune hunter.”

“A fortune hunter in the abstract is difficult to guard against.”

“I suppose my English is now as good as my Latin: to wit, not at all. I speak in the definitive. A _certain_ fortune hunter, with whom I was unfortunately a little acquainted, as he was a favorite of the lady’s father. I had heard of the want of principle and the viciousness of his character. But the man left my circle of acquaintances and I did not think of him again, until I returned from Spain and was informed he had very nearly eloped with the lady in question. As I tell you this, I can see further proofs of negligence in my own actions. I recommended the place and the guardian that allowed this... situation... to occur. I never warned the lady, or used my position of influence within her circle to shape her circumstances to the point where she would not ever think elopment an option. The only person who acted as they ought was—well, I cannot get into further detail without compromising the identities of all involved.”

Elizabeth touched his arm and said, kindly, “I suppose your cousin may have told you I like to sketch characters where I may, and to that end you have endeavored to shew yours to me in all its aspects, light and dark, but I beg you will not distress yourself for my amusement.”

“Edification, rather,” said the Colonel, still very serious. “Miss Bennet, I should hope you know I think highly of you, and do not see you as someone who could ever laugh at the pain of others. I speak as frankly as I do....” He struggled with himself and placing his hand over hers, said, “I mean only for you to be _truly_ acquainted with my character, as best as I understand it myself.”

She understood the inferences of _that_ , and blushed. But as they were now within view of the Parsonage, she looked away and said, in a lively tone, “Yes, and I shall sketch out a very fine character, stamped by the army. Indeed, I am well pleased with it. I need only knowledge of the army to actually complete it.”

“What do you know of it?”

“You wear red coats.”

Colonel Fitzwilliam laughed and the seriousness of the moment passed.

After dinner at Rosings that evening, they discussed the army, an institution Elizabeth but vaguely understood. Colonel Fitzwilliam, she assumed, was in charge of a regiment, but there ended her definitive knowledge.

“Yes, and one of my bataillons is presently in Portugal,” said he, “under the aegis of my commanding officer, Brigadier —-, and my most capable lieutenant colonel. When at last the army is satisfied my arms will not fall off, I shall rejoin the other battalion in London. It remains there to recruit and to train new men, before they are sent into the field as replacements. When they are ready, I shall go with the new to Portugal.”

“And are you in Portugal forever thereafter?”

“I should hope that our commanding officer, the Viscount of Wellington will have us back in Spain before the summer is out. But I have managed to return to England tolerably often. I do not think I have been away more than a year at most.”

As was his wont, Mr. Darcy had been staring at them while Lady Catherine talked at him, and it was to Darcy that Colonel Fitzwilliam turned. “Since ‘08 I have been more often in England, do you not think Darcy?”

“More than when you were stationed in India,” was Mr. Darcy’s only reply.

Elizabeth had been sincerely hoping Mr. Darcy would be too mortified to speak to her, let alone look at her, but she was disappointed in this. He turned next to her and looked about to speak. Elizabeth wished vainly for some distraction.

“I do think you could have managed a longer visit to Rosings last year, Fitzwilliam,” interrupted Lady Catherine. “I understand from my brother you were then in a stalemate. They cannot have wanted you in Spain so very much.”

This was evidentially a misapprehension of long standing. Looking much as Elizabeth fancied she and Jane must look when explaining entails to their mother, Colonel Fitzwilliam began to explain basic military tactics with a patience that usually only Jane could command. Mr. Darcy took a turn about the room, for no apparent reason. Eventually he stopped behind Elizabeth and said, “Miss Bennet, might I entreat you to play for us again?”

Elizabeth was startled. “I should hate to interrupt the general mood of the evening, sir, which appears to be for conversation. Indeed, I find Lady Catherine’s remarks on the Peninsular War fascinating.”

This was quite true; she was fascinated by how many opinions Lady Catherine could have on something she clearly knew nothing about.

Mr. Collins, hearing this, turned eagerly to them. “Indeed, Mr. Darcy, your aunt is so well informed on every particular. I daresay, had she been made a General, instead of Wellesley, we should be in France even now. The smallest detail does not escape her gracious condescension. Just last week, she was so very good as to notice we had taken to putting a small end table on the other side of the front hall in my humble abode, and advised us at some length how to move it.”

“I regret that I was out walking that morning, and missed Lady Catherine’s visit,” said Elizabeth, feeling really glad of Mr. Collins, for the first time in her life. “What advice did she give you?”

She and Mr. Darcy were then forced to listen to a nearly five minute account of thirty seconds of conversation, but by that time, Colonel Fitzwilliam had finished explaining just what a siege was, and why a commanding officer could not leave one, and turned to Elizabeth and Darcy again. His look of relief (which Lady Catherine could not see, as she was busy correcting Mr. Collins about the end table) was almost comical.

“It seems you can never escape Portugal, sir,” said Elizabeth.

“No, it follows me to England, which I am sure must be of considerable interest to cartographers.”

Darcy said, with the abruptness that characterized him this evening, “It must— Fitzwilliam.”

Elizabeth involuntarily put a hand to her bracelet.

“Yes?” prompted Colonel Fitzwilliam.

“What?”

“Did you wish something of me?”

Mr. Darcy looked blank.  

Colonel Fitzwilliam decided to ignore his relations for the time being, as none of them could be made to be sensible, and tried to engage Elizabeth and Charlotte in a conversation about Spanish music.  

“Perhaps Miss Bennet could play it, if you give her some notion of the tune,” said Mr. Darcy, returning to his theme.

“You are very insistent upon my playing this evening,” said Elizabeth. “Really, sir, you outdo Mrs. Collins in your patronage. But I must decline.”

He was trying to speak with her alone. Elizabeth did not know why, but she began to lose faith in Colonel Fitzwilliam’s previous assurances. Indeed, even Colonel Fitzwilliam was beginning to look puzzled.

“Darcy,” said he, “is all well?”

“Yes.”

“I thought Marjorie’s last letter to be encouraging. Did you receive anything from Georgiana that—”

“No,” said Darcy, looking much harassed. “I merely thought it good to ask Miss Bennet to play, as she has not given us that pleasure in several days.”

“It is a pleasure that I will surely repeat another time,” said Elizabeth, “and gladly too, but not this evening— I spent too much time working on the colonel to tell me of Spain. I have long wished to travel abroad, but as his wars have made it impossible to go very far beyond the shores of England, he must supply the details I cannot collect myself.”

“I shall be glad to supply any want of yours, Miss Bennett, particularly when it is so little trouble to myself.” It was said quite gallantly, but Colonel Fitzwilliam’s attention was still on his cousin. “If my cousin has some urgent matter of business, however, I will beg you to excuse me—”

“I do not,” said Darcy, turning and walking to the window.

Colonel Fitzwilliam was by now extremely puzzled.

Charlotte clearly did not know what to make of this either. She ventured a few proverbs on music, in much the same way that a servant might throw a blanket over a bird’s cage to keep it from squawking, before Miss de Bourgh very _nearly_ said something. The excitement of this was too much for everyone involved. Miss DeBourgh retired for the evening, the carriage was sent for, and Elizabeth and Charlotte settled it between them that though they had expected Mr. Darcy to be awkward after such a morning, this had quite exceeded their expectations.


	3. In which there is a proposal-- but not the one you expect

“Tell me,” said Elizabeth, as she walked with the colonel the next morning, her hand tucked in the crook of his arm, “does Miss de Bourgh ever speak?”

“I really could not tell you,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam. “She usually smiles or coughs to anything I say. Perhaps she speaks more to Darcy. I cannot imagine she speaks more to her mother.”

Elizabeth laughed. “No, indeed!”

“I cannot explain why Darcy is behaving so oddly. I tried to make him talk, when your party had returned.”

“I take it you were not successful.”

“I can only imagine he is so embarrassed by his meeting with you yesterday he kept trying to get you on your own to apologize. That or—” he looked askance at her, but there was a smile in his eyes “—Darcy may have the singular talent of making any uncomfortable situation yet more so, but if he can do someone he loves any kind of service, he does it immediately.”

Elizabeth thought this comment to reveal more of Colonel Fitzwilliam’s tolerance than Mr. Darcy’s good character. He saw her skepticism and said, “I see you do not believe me, but I beg you to delay your judgement a while. I think I heard you and Mrs. Collins ask after mutual acquaintances from Hertfordshire— a Miss Bingley and Mrs. Hurst?”

“Yes?”

“Then you must know the brother— a very gentleman-like man, and a great friend of Darcy’s.”

Elizabeth was not in a charitable mood and replied, dryly, “Mr. Darcy is uncommonly kind to Mr. Bingley, and takes a prodigious deal of care of him.”

Colonel Fitzwilliam was inclined to think her in earnest. “Yes, I really believe Darcy does take care of him in those points where he most wants care. From something that he told me in our journey hither, I have reason to think Bingley very much indebted to him.” Seeing that Elizabeth was unconvinced, he attempted to let drop the subject, “But I ought to beg his pardon, for I have no right to suppose that Bingley was the person meant. It was all conjecture. Give me but a moment and I can offer better proofs of my cousin’s good nature.”

“No, you have made the charge, sir, you must continue on until you have heard the noise of the great guns.”

“I will then, but it is a circumstance which Darcy could not wish to be generally known, because if it were to get round to the lady’s family, it would be an unpleasant thing.”

“You may depend upon my not mentioning it.”

“And remember that I have not much reason for supposing it to be Bingley. What he told me was merely this: that he congratulated himself on having lately saved a friend from a most imprudent and unequal marriage, but without mentioning names or any other particulars, and I only suspected it to be Bingley from believing him the kind of young man to get into a scrape of that sort, and from knowing them to have been together the whole of last summer. Then, too, Darcy had told me before that Bingley is romantic, and, having a common name on his wrist, has been very often led astray by his hopes some lady, clearly unsuited to him, and quite obviously bearing a name different from his on her wrist, was his soulmate.”

“Did Mr. Darcy give you reasons for this interference? Some assurance he knew they were not a match?”

“I understood that there were some very strong objections against the lady. It seemed to me that the lady herself was not to blame, but her circumstances were such that, even if Bingley’s name was not upon her wrist, she would not deny his attentions.”

“And what arts did he use to separate them?”

“He did not talk to me of his own arts,” said Fitzwilliam, smiling. “He only told me what I have now told you: that his friend was in trouble and he acted immediately to save him.”

Elizabeth made no answer, and walked on, her heart swelling with indignation. After watching her a little, Fitzwilliam asked her why she was so thoughtful.

“I am thinking of what you have been telling me,” said she. “Your cousin’s conduct does not suit my feelings. Why was he to be the judge?”

“You are rather disposed to call his interference officious?”

“I do not see what right Mr. Darcy had to decide on the propriety of his friend’s inclination, or why, upon his own judgement alone, he was to determine and direct in what manner his friend was to be happy. After all, if the lady was not to blame, he could _possibly_ have seen her soulmark. He could not _possibly_ have known that they were not a match. But,” she continued, recollecting herself, “as we know none of the particulars, it is not fair to condemn him. It is not to be supposed that there was much affection in the case.”

“That is not an unnatural surmise,” said Fitzwilliam, “but it is lessening the honor of my cousin’s triumph on his friend’s behalf very sadly.”

This was spoken jestingly; but it appeared to her so just a picture of Mr. Darcy, that she would not trust herself with an answer. The response she finally settled upon still struck too near a fear she did not like to acknowledge. “It seems very much like a Drury Lane melodrama, but I fear that your cousin’s notions of an improper match have less to do with unequal affection than unequal connections.”

“It would bear no weight with me,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam, with a look of sudden understanding. “Miss Bennet, you must not think because there is an earl on offer, I expect another in return; indeed, there are more unequal matches in my family than we openly acknowledge.”

This was certainly for her; her own joy in so hearing this warred confusingly with anger at Mr. Darcy and grief at Jane’s ruined prospects. In some confusion, she asked, “That is openly acknowledged or is accepted?”

“No one has been disowned, but I cannot say everyone behaves well or with courtesy towards the star-crossed. At least from those failures I have some notion of tactics. The greatest challenge would not be my family but I fear my finances. I admit, I have not well prepared. One cannot save anything on an army salary-- even for a colonel, one's expenses on campaign outweigh one's pay-- and though my father makes me a very generous allowance, and I have only used the interest off the money my mother left me in the Funds, I spent too long believing that even if I should find my match, it would be impossible to marry, and I have not the capacity for self-denial that allows for saving against a distant probability. I always fancied I should find some heiress equally without hope of finding her soulmate. It would be uncomfortable but not impossible to live. I dislike knowing I must ask a future wife to follow the drum because of my reduced circumstances—”

“To a woman of spirit,” said Elizabeth, her pulse hammering in her throat, “such a request would never be unreasonable. And riches are relative. What you may consider reduced circumstances I might consider very comfortable indeed.”

Colonel Fitzwilliam said to her, in a soft, and rather intimate tone, “Would you indeed, Miss Bennet?”

Elizabeth turned impulsively towards him, but rather wished she had not. Behind Colonel Fitzwilliam’s shoulder was Mr. Collins. Colonel Fitzwilliam was at first puzzled, and slightly concerned by the change in her expression, but following the line of her gaze, assumed his usual look of genial tolerance.

“Ah, Colonel Fitzwilliam!” cried Mr. Collins, wheezing his way towards them. “May I take this moment to thank you for your most charitable attentions to my fair cousin Elizabeth. Your condescension is as great as Lady Catherine’s towards myself.”

The horrifying idea of Lady Catherine having a preference for Mr. Collins outside of the church was enough to make Elizabeth snort; this she turned into a sneeze.

“Bless you Miss Bennet,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam, fighting a smile. “Sir, I cannot possibly be compared with my aunt, and really, Miss Bennet is doing _me_ a great kindness by giving up her solitary walks in order to bear me company.”

“Nay, Colonel Fitzwilliam, your family’s generosity is unparalleled,” said Mr. Collins, and launched into so lengthy a speech that it lasted until they reached the Parsonage.

There, shut into her own room, Elizabeth could think without interruption of all that she had heard. She tried at first to dwell on Colonel Fitzwilliam’s hinted intentions, and felt sparks of brilliant excitement leaping through her mind— that she might travel beyond what she could ever have hoped, that she might never fear a diminution of circumstances or genteel poverty, and then, most happily, that she might have found the soul for whom she was intended— but this faded into a steady blaze of anger that this was not Jane’s lot, and perhaps would never be.

It was not to be supposed that any other people could be meant than those with whom she was connected. There could not exist in the world two men over whom Mr. Darcy could have such boundless influence. That he had been concerned in the measures taken to separate Bingley and Jane she had never doubted; but she had always attributed to Miss Bingley the principal design and arrangement of them. If his own vanity, however, did not mislead him, he was the cause, his pride and caprice were the cause, of all that Jane had suffered, and still continued to suffer. He had ruined for a while every hope of happiness for the most affectionate, generous heart in the world; and no one could say how lasting an evil he might have inflicted.

“There were some very strong objections against the lady,” were Colonel Fitzwilliam’s words; and those strong objections probably were, her having one uncle who was a country attorney, and another who was in business in London.

“Circumstances,” she exclaimed to herself, “to which Colonel Fitzwilliam does not object, and he is the son of an earl! To Jane herself there could be no possibility of objection; all loveliness and goodness as she is!—her understanding excellent, her mind improved, and her manners captivating. Neither could anything be urged against my father, who, though with some peculiarities, has abilities Mr. Darcy himself need not disdain, and respectability which he will probably never reach.” When she thought of her mother, her confidence gave way a little; but she would not allow that any objections there had material weight with Mr. Darcy, whose pride, she was convinced, would receive a deeper wound from the want of importance in his friend’s connections, than from their want of sense; and she was quite decided, at last, that he had been partly governed by this worst kind of pride, and partly by the wish of maintaining his control over his friends.

The agitation and tears which the subject occasioned brought on a headache; and it grew so much worse towards the evening, that, added to her unwillingness to see Mr. Darcy, it determined her not to attend her cousins to Rosings, where they were engaged to drink tea. Mrs. Collins, seeing that she was really unwell, did not press her to go and as much as possible prevented her husband from pressing her; but Mr. Collins could not conceal his apprehension of Lady Catherine’s being rather displeased by her staying at home.

“She will be more displeased at our tardiness,” said Mrs. Collins, but, hanging back a moment, asked, “Lizzy, you did not quarrel with Colonel Fitzwilliam did you?”

“No, Charlotte, I continue to think him everything aimable. I am merely out of charity with his cousin.”

“Ah yes,” said Charlotte, with a humorous look. “I can well imagine you do not wish a repeat of yesterday evening. I shall report back on how the colonel mourns your absence.” Then, with a little more seriousness, “I know you do not think it wise to secure a man before you are certain of his character, but I think it worth taking the risk in this case. If he bears any name other than ‘Elizabeth’ I shall be surprised indeed.”

“Bennet, I think,” said Elizabeth, managing a smile, “but it is a thing we have but obliquely discussed.”

Charlotte left, happy to smugness knowing she had been right, and perhaps only a little sad that the system that had not at all worked for her had worked so well for her friend.

***

When they were gone, Elizabeth, as if intending to exasperate herself as much as possible against Mr. Darcy, chose for her employment the examination of all the letters which Jane had written to her since her being in Kent. They contained no actual complaint, nor was there any revival of past occurrences, or any communication of present suffering. But in all, and in almost every line of each, there was a want of that cheerfulness which had been used to characterise her style, and which, proceeding from the serenity of a mind at ease with itself and kindly disposed towards everyone, had been scarcely ever clouded. Elizabeth noticed every sentence conveying the idea of uneasiness, with an attention which it had hardly received on the first perusal. Mr. Darcy’s shameful boast of what misery he had been able to inflict, gave her a keener sense of her sister’s sufferings.

She was suddenly roused by the sound of the door-bell, and her spirits were a little fluttered by the idea of its being Colonel Fitzwilliam himself, who had once before called late in the evening, and might now come to inquire particularly after her. But this idea was soon banished, and her spirits were very differently affected, when, to her utter amazement, she saw Mr. Darcy walk into the room. In an hurried manner he immediately began an inquiry after her health, imputing his visit to a wish of hearing that she were better. She answered him with cold civility. He sat down for a few moments, and then getting up, walked about the room. Elizabeth was surprised, but said not a word. After a silence of several minutes, he came towards her in an agitated manner, and thus began:

“Miss Bennet, my cousin told me this evening some news that I cannot believe.”

“You shall have to be more specific than that sir,” said Elizabeth, very thoroughly out of charity with Mr. Darcy. “If you mean to quiz me about the probability of the French invading Russia, you shall have to query him.”

He flushed. “I beg you will be serious, Miss Bennet.”

Elizabeth said nothing.

“Miss Bennet.”

“Sir?”

Mr. Darcy paced towards the fireplace, rested his arm or a moment on the mantel, and then turned to her again. “Miss Bennet.”

“That is my name, sir.”

“My cousin,” said Mr. Darcy, sounded more agonized than she had ever heard him, “has, I think, made a very serious error.”

“Has he?” asked Elizabeth, icily. “And what is that?”

“He seems to be under the impression,” got out Mr. Darcy, with great difficulty, “that you bear _his_ name on your wrist, and that— and that you are— that you are the person mentioned on his own.”

Elizabeth could not quite banish the blush of pleasure at this idea, and was almost grateful to Mr. Darcy for this confirmation. Of course, he then had to ruin it by saying, “There has been a grave error. Such a connection between yourself and my— my cousin is impossible.”

“Oh?” asked Elizabeth. “Do explain, sir. I am agog to hear your reasoning.”

He did not catch with what sarcasm this was said, and instead launched into what to him seemed a very compelling list of reasons. Her family, her dowry, her education was gone over; the objections the Fitzwilliams would make; the relative positions of his family’s and hers in society; his sense of her inferiority, of it being a degradation for a man of his or his cousin’s station to marry her, was more lengthily dwelt on than his cousin’s character and probable happiness. He concluded this speech with, “The situation of your mother’s family, though objectionable, is nothing in comparison to that total want of propriety so frequently, so almost uniformly betrayed by herself, by your three younger sisters, and occasionally even by your father. Pardon me. It pains me to offend you.”

Elizabeth was too shocked for a retort.

“But amidst your concern for the defects of your nearest relations, and your displeasure at this representation of them, let it give you consolation to consider that, to have conducted yourselves so as to avoid any share of the like censure, is praise no less generally bestowed on you and your elder sister, than it is honourable to the sense and disposition of both.”

“What a generous concession, sir,” said Elizabeth, through clenched teeth.

He picked up on her displeasure and thought, for some reason, that offering proof of this would calm her. “My opinion of all parties was confirmed at the Netherfield Ball.” Every mortifying incident was gone over in painstaking detail. 

The fact that she could not refute this proof incensed her yet further.

“So you can see the scruples that keep a sensible man from forming any serious design on you, even if your name happens to be a match,” he said, picking uncomfortably at the cuff of his own shirt. “Then too, there is the fact—”

“Sir,” said Elizabeth, trying to keep hold of her temper, “if your cousin has no objection to my circumstances, I cannot see why you do.”

“Because,” said he, “I know Richard’s temperament. He is too blithe about the obstacles in his path, or any dangers before him. He never realizes the severity of the trouble until it has injured him.”

“You do your cousin a disservice in this! But I take it it is something of a habit with you, to break apart soulmates, because of your perception of their inequality.”

Darcy did not seem to understand her.

“I speak, sir, of my sister and Mr. Bingley. No motive can excuse the unjust and ungenerous part you acted there. You dare not, you cannot deny, that you have been the principal, if not the only means of dividing them from each other—of exposing one to the censure of the world for caprice and instability, and the other to its derision for disappointed hopes, and involving them both in misery of the acutest kind.”

She paused, and saw with no slight indignation that he was listening with an air which proved him wholly unmoved by any feeling of remorse. He even looked at her with a smile of affected incredulity.

“Can you deny that you have done it?” she repeated.

With assumed tranquillity he then replied: “I have no wish of denying that I did everything in my power to separate my friend from your sister, or that I rejoice in my success. The objections I listed before would be enough, but there is also this: I know they are not soulmates. It is easy to mistake matters. I have seen it many times myself.”

“I was forgetting Mr. Wickham!”

This at last, disconcerted him. “Mr. Wickham?” he asked, incredulously. “How can he relate to our present conversation?”

“You have separated him from your sister,” said Elizabeth.

“What? What has he said on this subject?”

“I happened to see part of his soulmark when he was playing loo at my aunt Phillip’s,” said Elizabeth, her color high. “It was unintentional; his uniform was new and the sleeve did not yet fit. He was very embarrassed about it, but later, when we were better acquainted, he shewed me the ‘George’ written there— the very nickname of your sister! And because you did not like that the son of a steward dared love a Miss Darcy of Pemberley you drove him from Pemberley and from your society, denied him the living your own father left him in his will, and have keep him from his soulmate forever!”

“You take an eager interest in that gentleman’s concerns,” said Darcy, in a less tranquil tone, and with a heightened colour.

“Who that knows what his misfortunes have been, can help feeling an interest in him?”

“His misfortunes!” repeated Darcy contemptuously; “yes, his misfortunes have been great indeed.”

“And of your infliction,” cried Elizabeth with energy. “You have reduced him to his present state of poverty—comparative poverty. You have withheld the advantages which you must know to have been designed for him. You have deprived the best years of his life of that independence which was no less his due than his desert. You have separated him from the woman for whom he was intended. You have done all this! and yet you can treat the mention of his misfortune with contempt and ridicule.”

“Miss Bennet,” said he, as he walked with quick steps about the room, “have a care what you say. I knew what I was about when I separated your sister from my friend, and your _friend_ from my sister. It is easier to mistake a soulmate than you yet know.”

Elizabeth cried, “Mr. Darcy, I cannot believe you are saying this to me when you have actually seen my soulmark. I am prepared to brave the impropriety and shew you the ‘Fitzwilliam’ written there once more if it will content you.”

Then, he added the objection that roused Elizabeth’s resentment so thoroughly she lost all patience and all compassion in anger: “That does not prove anything. I was myself baptized _Fitzwilliam_ Darcy. I may very well be your soulmate.”

“Then, sir, I may offer you very real proof that I am in earnest, and my affection for your cousin is real,” cried Elizabeth. “I know beyond all doubt that you are _not_ my soulmate! From the very beginning—from the first moment, I may almost say—of my acquaintance with you, your manners, impressing me with the fullest belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain of the feelings of others, were such as to form the groundwork of disapprobation on which succeeding events have built so immovable a dislike; I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry.”

Mr. Darcy’s complexion became pale with anger, and the disturbance of his mind was visible in every feature. He was struggling for the appearance of composure, and would not open his lips till he believed himself to have attained it. The pause was to Elizabeth’s feelings dreadful. At length, with a voice of forced calmness, he said: “And this is your opinion of me.”

Elizabeth said nothing.

Mr. Darcy walked to the window and back again before saying, “Miss Bennet, if I were to offer you my hand—”

“You could not sir, in any _possible_ way that would tempt me to accept it,” said Elizabeth. “If I had been a fortune hunter, as you seem to think I am, would I not have shewn _you_ more partiality than your cousin? Would I not now declare that I was wrong and eagerly accept _you_ , because your first name _happens_ to be the same as your cousin’s last name? But I have acted in accordance with my feelings, and the dictates of propriety. I have encouraged your cousin because I like him, and because I think it a very real possibility that the name on his wrist is a partner to the one on mine, and for no other reason. I know you take, as you phrased it, “an eager interest” in the wrists of everyone in your circle, but if I am mistaken in this, let him be the one to tell me— not someone so wholly unconnected with me, or my happiness.”

His astonishment was obvious; and he looked at her with an expression of mingled incredulity and mortification.

“There, Mr. Darcy,” said she, tartly. “Have you any other insults for me? Have you any other doubts about my character, or my sincerity? I would ask if you would like to denigrate any more of my relations, but you have done such a thorough job of that, I cannot think there are any left. Perhaps I can dig up a great-aunt who was a Quaker, so you might amuse yourself further?”

“You have said quite enough madam. Forgive me for taking up so much of your time.”

And with these words he hastily left the room, and Elizabeth heard him the next moment open the front door and quit the house.

The tumult of her mind, was now painfully great. She knew not how to support herself, and from actual weakness sat down and cried for half-an-hour. Her astonishment, as she reflected on what had passed, was increased by every review of it. She tried to find some consolation at least in the knowledge that Colonel Fitzwilliam did indeed bear the name ‘Bennet’ on his wrist, that she had found her soulmate, but the interview was too fresh and too painful. Despite the colonel’s earlier assurances, she could not now believe that his family would look upon the match with favor. If this was Mr. Darcy’s reaction, what could be Lady Catherine’s, or his father’s? She continued in very agitated reflections till the sound of Lady Catherine’s carriage made her feel how unequal she was to encounter Charlotte’s observation, and hurried her away to her room.

 

***

 

Elizabeth awoke the next morning to the same thoughts and meditations which had at length closed her eyes. She could not yet recover from the shock of what had happened; it was impossible to think of anything else; and, totally indisposed for employment, she resolved, soon after breakfast, to indulge herself in air and exercise. She was proceeding directly to her favourite walk, when the recollection of Mr. Darcy’s sometimes coming there stopped her, and instead of entering the park, she turned up the lane, which led farther from the turnpike-road. The park paling was still the boundary on one side, and she soon passed one of the gates into the ground.

After walking two or three times along that part of the lane, she was tempted, by the pleasantness of the morning, to stop at the gates and look into the park. The five weeks which she had now passed in Kent had made a great difference in the country, and every day was adding to the verdure of the early trees. She was on the point of continuing her walk, when she caught a glimpse of a gentleman within the sort of grove which edged the park; he was moving that way; and, fearful of its being Mr. Darcy, she was directly retreating. But the person who advanced was now near enough to see her, and stepping forward with eagerness, pronounced her name.

With what painful relief she heard Colonel Fitzwilliam’s voice instead cannot be described; let it suffice to say that the tears started to her eyes and she went to him, hands outstretched, saying, “Fitzwilliam! I am very glad to see you.”

“Miss Bennet?” Colonel Fitzwilliam asked, taking her hands. “What is the matter? Are you still unwell?”

“No, it is only that I cannot meet peacefully with your cousin,” said Elizabeth. “Last evening he condescended to tell me I am not your soulmate and kindly listed all the reasons that render me ineligible.”

“ _Darcy_ did this?” cried Colonel Fitzwilliam. “I would more believe Anne had insulted you than Darcy— he, out of all my family best knows how unusual my circumstances are and how unhappy I was with them. I expected him to rejoice that I had at last found you. And Darcy— why, we share joint guardianship of Georgiana, we grew up together, we have been friends since we were breeched. Darcy told you— what did he tell you exactly?”

Elizabeth repeated their conversation, not very coherently; and it was only when she had finished the telling that she realized what basic assumptions had been accepted by both herself and Colonel Fitzwilliam, when they first saw each other. She wondered, briefly, if she ought to be upset, or alarmed, but there was already a feeling of great naturalness, as if it were only right she should turn to him in her distress.

Colonel Fitzwilliam listened attentively to her, not interrupting, releasing her hands only to tuck one in the crook of his arm, as he had already realized she thought better in motion than at rest. At the end he said, “Oh  God, I am to blame once again. I had no idea you were related to the lady in question. I should never have used that story as an example of Darcy’s overeagerness to be _doing_ for those he loves. I have overcorrected; I thought the lesson of the French cannon was to be more cautious, but in telling you only partial truths, I have made your opinion of my cousin—”

“ _You_ have done nothing,” cried Elizabeth. “His actions must speak for themselves. There were great objections to the lady— great indeed! I have no doubt they were the same objections he leveled at me— that our circumstances are not equal.”

“I cannot defend Darcy on that,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam, his expression darkening, “nor have I any wish to. Your anger is well justified.”

Elizabeth loved him for this; for taking seriously her anger. “When you mentioned a formal agreement on Bennets, what did he say exactly?” When she saw he hesitated, she offered a tart, “You can tell me nothing worse than he did himself.”

“Very well— I think you have guessed by now, what name I bear on my wrist, and can enter into my feelings on its comparative rarity, and how it seemed very unlikely that I would find someone— and if I did, how unlikely it would be that I could marry that person. I was honest about my feelings with Darcy, when he saw my mark, and he offered the information that all was not lost. He had lately met a family with five daughters, all by the name of Bennet. He doubted any of them were my soulmate, for the youngest let anyone read the Chinese characters upon her wrist, the next eldest was friendly only to men named ‘Tom,’ and the personality of the middle girl could not in any way compliment mine, and—” he looked extremely awkward. “And I am aware that I am speaking of your sisters, whom I hope will be my sisters too, but— I erred earlier, in failing to be honest with you—”

“Pray continue,” said Elizabeth, grimly, “I should dearly love to hear what objections he had to myself and Jane.”

“To you there could be none,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam. “I was surprised to hear Darcy said all he did to you because he told me that you were extremely pretty and very charming, and played and sang very well, but showed such a marked disinclination for marriage, your soulmark must be as unusual as those of your youngest and middle sister. And— this will not reflect well on Darcy, but pray recall that he was telling me this alone, and to keep me from riding to Hedfordshire at once, to force myself upon the notice of strangers. As it was, I would not let him go without extracting a formal promise that he would introduce me to any Miss Bennet he happened to find in town.”

“Tell me, please.”

“He, ah— he thought your eldest sister, though extremely beautiful and good-natured, was not easily moved, but easily swayed by your mother. If the son of an earl— even a second son— should come into view, your mother might insist upon your sister’s pursuing, or even marrying me, regardless of the name upon her wrist.”

Elizabeth was so furious she could not speak for some minutes.

Colonel Fitzwilliam looked down at her in worry and said, “Perhaps I should not have said all I did. Darcy would never have said these things if he had known it would get back to the Bennet family—”

“Fitzwilliam,” she interrupted, “if we are at all to get on, you must treat me as a rational creature capable of self-regulation and independent thought. I should be more upset with you if you insisted I go through the world with blinders, than to present me with the truth in all its parts, however unpalatable it may be. And your cousin more-or-less told me all you have just relayed last evening, only with less tact, and greater intention of offense.” She suddenly recalled a point she had failed to make earlier and said, “Do you know anything of a Mr. Wickham?”

His expression darkened. “Too much, unfortunately.”

Elizabeth looked up at him, puzzled. “I never heard of any harm in him, only that he dared love Miss Darcy and was cruelly separated from her.”

“And who told you this?”

“He did.”

“George Wickham told you that, did he? By God, I should have shot the man as soon as Darcy told me—” Colonel Fitzwilliam scowled at the ground. “Miss Bennet, I hope you shall soon be family so I think I might now be forgiven for telling you this, but do you recall when I said some men had learnt to take advantage of the system?”

“Yes?”

“My ward, Georgiana— she is full young still. She has only just received her soulmark. Last summer— when mind you, she was but _fifteen_ , and went about with her hair down and her wrists bare— George Wickham attempted to elope with her.”

Elizabeth was so astonished she could do nothing but stare. Colonel Fitzwilliam scrounged up a smile. “Fortunately that did not happen. Georgiana is a good girl, and told Darcy the whole. It was perhaps best that she told Darcy instead of myself; I would have shot George Wickham, instead of merely telling him to go away forever— as Darcy did. It was obvious Wickham’s object with Georgianna’s dowry of thirty thousand pounds, for Wickham left as soon as it was understood he would not get a haypenny from it.”

“A fifteen year old girl!” cried Elizabeth. “He thought it right to get a fifteen year old girl to run away with him? Before her soul mark had even appeared?”

“As I understand it, he persuaded her that the ‘George’ written on his own wrist meant _her._ From all I know of Wickham his only soulmate is himself, for he is the only creature he truly loves. Georgiana doubted at first, but she had never before seen another person’s soul mark and did not know that among true soulmates the marks are generally a match, not merely part of a name. Then, too, Wickham so protested his love she believed him. From there Wickham found it easy to convince Georgiana that within the year, his name would appear on her wrist. That has not proven to be the case. I was in Spain when Wickham importuned her, but I was in London with Darcy and Georgiana when her mark appeared. She was in floods of tears for nearly three days at how stupid she had been. My sister-in-law took Georgiana to Bath to see if the waters would in any way soothe her spirits. I really doubt we would have come to Kent if Marjorie had not assured us that Georgiana would be better presently, and would only feel worse if we disrupted our plans on her account.” After a moment he said, “I cannot imagine how Georgiana was last summer.”

“Nor can I,” said Elizabeth.

“And, as I said, I knew he was a fortune hunter before I left for Spain; a friend of Marjorie's, a Miss Crawford, with twenty thousand pounds, was often witty on the subject of Wickham's determined pursuit of her, and asked me if I did not know the gentleman in question. I told her that I knew him when we were children, and knew how he had plagued Darcy at university, and how he had nearly sent down from his college because of his impropriety with the maids. Wickham did not improve after that. I was one of the executors of old Mr. Darcy’s will and knew first-hand that Mr. Wickham had turned down a promised living in exchange for three thousand pounds. Once he had squandered that, he plagued Darcy for the living more-or-less constantly. Miss Crawford’s report served only to confirm my dislike of him. I ought to have said something to Darcy, at least— but Miss Crawford found it so amusing, and is so well guarded by one thing and another, I did not think Mr. Wickham would be anything more than a nuisance.” He paused and said, “I underestimated the danger, now that I think on it; Miss Crawford and Marjorie used to roll their eyes at all the accusations Mr. Wickham leveled against Darcy, little knowing the intimacy between Miss Crawford and our family— but, then again, Miss Crawford and my sister-in-law well knew Darcy and his awkwardness, and knew Mr. Wickham to smile and smile and still be a villain. To anyone unfamiliar with the characters of either men, with only their manners to go on, it would be sadly easy to be taken in.”

The extravagance and general profligacy which Colonel Fitzwilliam scrupled not to lay at Mr. Wickham’s charge, exceedingly shocked her; the more so, as she could bring no proof of its injustice. She had never heard of Wickham before his entrance into the ——shire Militia, in which he had engaged at the persuasion of the young man who, on meeting him accidentally in town, had there renewed a slight acquaintance. Of his former way of life nothing had been known in Hertfordshire but what he told himself. As to his real character, had information been in her power, she had never felt a wish of inquiring. His countenance, voice, and manner had established him at once in the possession of every virtue. She tried to recollect some instance of goodness, some distinguished trait of integrity or benevolence, that might rescue him from Colonel Fitzwilliam’s concerted attack; or at least, by the predominance of virtue, atone for those casual errors under which she would endeavour to class the idleness and vice of many years’ continuance. But no such recollection befriended her. She could see him instantly before her, in every charm of air and address; but she could remember no more substantial good than the general approbation of the neighbourhood, and the regard which his social powers had gained him in the mess.

She perfectly remembered everything that had passed in conversation between Wickham and herself, in their first evening at Mrs. Phillips’s. Many of his expressions were still fresh in her memory. She was now struck with the impropriety of such communications to a stranger, and wondered it had escaped her before. She saw the indelicacy of putting himself forward as he had done, and the inconsistency of his professions with his conduct. She was aghast that he had shewn her his soulmark; why, she and Colonel Fitzwilliam had not yet seen each others’ marks, and they talked as if marriage were a settled thing between them! There could be no excuse for such impropriety.

She remembered that Mr. Wickham had boasted of having no fear of seeing Mr. Darcy—that Mr. Darcy might leave the country, but that he should stand his ground; yet he had avoided the Netherfield ball the very next week. She remembered also that, till the Netherfield family had quitted the country, he had told his story to no one but herself; but that after their removal it had been everywhere discussed; that he had then no reserves, no scruples in sinking Mr. Darcy’s character, though he had assured her that respect for the father would always prevent his exposing the son.

How differently did everything now appear in which he was concerned! Every lingering struggle in his favour grew fainter and fainter; and in farther justification of Mr. Darcy, she could not but allow that Mr. Bingley, when questioned by Jane, had long ago asserted his blamelessness in the affair; that proud and repulsive as were his manners, she had never, in the whole course of their acquaintance—an acquaintance which had latterly brought them much together, and given her a sort of intimacy with his ways—seen anything that betrayed him to be unprincipled or unjust—anything that spoke him of irreligious or immoral habits; that among his own connections he was esteemed and valued—that even Wickham had allowed him merit as a brother, and that she had often heard him speak so affectionately of his sister as to prove him capable of some amiable feeling; that had his actions been what Mr. Wickham represented them, so gross a violation of everything right could hardly have been concealed from the world; and that friendship between a person capable of it, and such an amiable man as Mr. Bingley, was incomprehensible.

She grew absolutely ashamed of herself. Of neither Darcy nor Wickham could she think without feeling she had been blind, partial, prejudiced, absurd.

There was nothing to be done but to sit down on a fallen log and cry.

“I did not mean to make you cry,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam, desperately patting his pockets in search of a handkerchief. “Merely to explain why George Wickham should not be considered an expert on our family or on Darcy’s character and actions. I hope this may too go some way to explaining Darcy’s behavior to you. I know it cannot be fully excused, and indeed, I mean to ask him myself what the devil he meant by saying to you all he did; but I can only think that after what happened to Georgiana he violently distrusts the notion of soulmarks altogether.”

“How despicably I have acted!” she cried; “I, who have prided myself on my discernment! I, who have valued myself on my abilities! Had I been in love, I could not have been more wretchedly blind! But vanity, not love, has been my folly. Pleased with the preference of one, and offended by the neglect of the other, on the very beginning of our acquaintance, I have courted prepossession and ignorance, and driven reason away, where either were concerned. Till this moment I never knew myself.”

Much alarmed by these strictures against herself, Colonel Fitzwilliam said, “Elizabeth— if I may call you that— I would not have you blame yourself for taking Darcy to task for his rudeness, particularly when he spent all of yesterday evening apparently denigrating your entire family down to... your Quaker great-aunt, I think you said?”

“That was a joke,” said Elizabeth, miserably. She recalled how yesterday Mr. Darcy had mentioned her family in terms of such mortifying, yet merited reproach, and her sense of shame was severe. The justice of the charge struck her too forcibly for denial, and the circumstances to which he particularly alluded as having passed at the Netherfield ball, and as confirming all his first disapprobation, could not have made a stronger impression on his mind than on hers.

The compliment to herself and her sister was not unfelt. It soothed, but it could not console her for the contempt which had thus been self-attracted by the rest of her family; and as she considered that Jane’s disappointment had in fact been the work of her nearest relations, and reflected how materially the credit of both must be hurt by such impropriety of conduct, she felt depressed beyond anything she had ever known before.

“All he said was not wrong. You could not know because you have never met my family, but his reproaches were not without merit!”

“His reproaches were specific to himself, not to me,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam, awkwardly crouching in the lane before her. “Miss Bennet— Elizabeth, will you look at me?”

She wiped her eyes (and nose) on her gloves, as Colonel Fitzwilliam had been unable to find a handkerchief, and managed to look him in the eyes.

He took her hands in his, as disgusting as her gloves now were, and said, “I am sorry Darcy’s own fears and judgments have so upset you, but please know that his concerns are not my own. Since meeting you, I have been happy at the notion of soulmates for perhaps the first time since my soulmark appeared. He may doubt and mistrust, but I do not. What matters to me is not your family or circumstances, but who _you_ are, and your willingness to to engage in the only life I am somewhat embarassed to say I can offer you.”

“Fitzwilliam, you must not think so meanly of me! I shall tell you a great secret— I have learnt to manage a household on less than two thousand a year.”

“Really?” He looked extremely surprised by this. “My pay is a pittance, and doesn't even meet the cost of mess fees and equipment, but my income is much greater than that."

"Money your mother left you, you mentioned?"

"Yes, and interest from prizes taken in India, and a quarterly allowance from my father-- which usually gets me to about... eight thousand a year, I think.”

Elizabeth gaped at him. “And this you think a paltry sum on which to live? That is four times the amount required to keep my whole family comfortable. On such a sum, I have no fear of hardship. Indeed, I cannot imagine why you are apologizing for having so little to offer, unless you are entirely unwilling to reexamine your habits of expense."

“I am perfectly willing, if you have the patience to teach me better management; I only mean that I have no house or estate, and have not the means to immediately purchase either. I cannot now sell out, nor do I think I could really bear to be parted from you, now that at last we know each other. It would not displease you, then, to follow the drum?”

Elizabeth had been considering this more-or-less since their first conversation and said, “No, I think I should enjoy it, rather. I have always preferred travel, and even your cousin and his friends cannot deny I am an excellent walker. The only consideration that gives me pause is that I am no horsewoman—”

“That is easily fixed. I have two months at least before I must to Portugal. If I cannot teach you to ride in that time, I really ought to sell my commission.”

Her joy dimmed somewhat when she recalled Mr. Darcy’s reaction to her circumstances and said, “I cannot think your family will be very pleased.”

“My father and siblings will be,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam, smiling at her. “I hope this will not disgust you, or cause you to think we are not soulmates, but everyone in my immediate circle— including myself— had... resigned themselves to the idea that I should never have a wife, but an intimate friend of my own sex—though 'resigned' implies a degree of comfort none of them had with the idea, except perhaps Honoria and Marjorie. I did pursue companionship amongst my own sex, but never found a match—” gesturing to his wrist “— and I must admit, the general disapprobation with which such relationships meet wore on me considerably.”

“I thought as much, with all your references to never marrying,” said Elizabeth. “Can you like a woman as much, or as well as a man?”

“Indeed, yes! You shall think me fairly indiscriminate, but I have been— and am— as attracted to the opposite sex as to my own.”

“I merely think you an ancient Greek sir. I am too well educated— or too oddly educated— to think it in any way unusual or reprehensible. As long as you can love only me from now on, I shall be very well contented.”

He laughed. “That is an easy promise, Miss Bennet. And there is a fairly easy way to prove it.” Elizabeth said something, she knew not what, indicative of her agreement. Colonel Fitzwilliam released her hands but seemed rather resigned to kneeling in the dirt so they might be on eye level. He said, in stops and starts, as he fumbled at his gloves, “It is odd— my hands shake more now that they did even at Albuera.”

His intent was very clear now, and for some breathless moments, Elizabeth’s world narrowed to the bare left hand of Colonel Fitzwilliam. He cleared his throat and offered his hand to her.

On his inner wrist, ‘Bennet’ curled, in a careful, even copperplate, like an invitation to a ball.

She laughed and held out her left hand, wrist upwards. “If you please, Fitzwilliam!”

Colonel Fitzwilliam touched the two cloth-covered buttons at her wrist reverently, as if for luck, before undoing them. Elizabeth’s breath quickened. There was a curious blank in her thoughts, as Colonel Fitzwiliam pulled off her glove and stared at the name like a shield over the veins to her hand, and then bent swiftly to kiss it. He looked up with her in a wonder and joy very like her own.

“You will think me unpardonably silly,” he said, glance dancing over her face and figure, as if he doubted she were real, “but I never thought—”

“Nor I,” said Elizabeth, giddily. “One daydreams, of course, but ‘Fitzwilliam’ is so uncommon a name—”

“It is everything ridiculous— I disliked being injured in Spain, but I should take a far worse explosion, and gladly, too, if it meant meeting you. I can hardly believe—” Colonel Fitzwilliam looked slightly dazed. “Miss Elizabeth Bennet!”

“Yes, Colonel Richard Fitzwilliam?”

“But in our rush of planning I forgot to ask....” Colonel Fitzwilliam smiled up at her. “Miss Bennet, will you marry me?”

Elizabeth laughed and, flinging her arms around his shoulders with enough force to nearly knock him over, exclaimed, “Yes, Colonel Fitzwilliam, I will.”


	4. In which Lady Catherine holds forth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A very slight trigger warning for historical attitudes about LGBTQA+ relationships. This is a more accepting universe than historical reality, but it's still not perfect.

To Elizabeth’s surprise, Lady Catherine greeted the news of their engagement with relief, before deciding that she, of course, had been the one to find a solution to her nephew’s socially awkward dilemma. 

“I do not know Fitzwilliam,” said she, as Elizabeth and Colonel Fitzwilliam sat patiently before her, “why for so many years you were so very worried about your soulmark. I well remember when it appeared! You yourself were ashen-faced, your brother quite lost his infamous composure, Matlock locked all the children out of the breakfast parlor, my sister Anne fainted, old Mr. Darcy spat out his coffee, dear Sir Lewis turned quite red, and your dear mother, God rest her soul, went into hysterics. ‘Christabel,’ I told her, ‘you are in hysterics over a problem that will resolve itself in due course. Did you not consider,’ said I, ‘that it might be a last name and not a first? My own sister, Lady Anne, had the name ‘Darcy’ upon her wrist, and she died a Mrs. Darcy. If she were not in a swoon she would tell you so herself.’ Your mother did not listen to me at the time, but I am sure that if she were alive now, she would very much regret that she did not accept my assurances when you were sixteen, and save herself... it must be... fourteen years of anxiety?”

“As my mother died four years ago, I think it more likely ten,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam, with remarkable equanimity. 

“Indeed yes,” said Lady Catherine. “Yes, I had something like this in mind ever since I heard that my parson would inherit an estate from the Bennets of Longbourne. ‘Mr. Collins,’ I told him, ‘you must have some of your fair cousins to visit.’ Never saying of course, why he must. I pride myself on my discernment. But ‘Mr. Collins,’ said I, ‘you have five female cousins, by the name of Bennet, you must bring at least one of them here.’ And as soon as you arrived, Miss Elizabeth Bennet, I began to suspect you were a good match for dear Fitzwilliam. You will not, I think, object to the life of a soldier’s wife.”

To be the wife of a colonel seemed to Elizabeth a very different thing than being the wife of a common soldier, but before she could phrase this in a way amusing enough to be spoken aloud, Lady Catherine continued on, “Yes, you are a very lively girl, Miss Bennet, of a very similar humor to dear Fitzwilliam. I knew as soon as you played for us, with Fitzwilliam to turn the pages, that I had managed to correctly pair together two souls. I observed you both most carefully; indeed, it had been my wish for you to play together to see how you would work together at any shared task.”

“Colonel Fitzwilliam turned pages with such elan I was quite overcome,” said Elizabeth, solemnly. 

“An arduous task,” agreed Colonel Fitzwilliam. “It is the modern day equivalent of dragon-slaying. I am glad to hear I acquitted myself well.”

“Your page turning was something out of an Arthurian legend.”

“I am unmanned by such praise.”

Lady Catherine could tell that they were joking, but, as it was inconceivable they could at all be making fun of her, she chose to think they were merely just giddy from their engagement. “Yes, it is touching indeed to see such a thing— but Fitzwilliam, have you at all written to Miss Bennet’s father? I think you must not have done, for you have never met him.”

Colonel Fitzwilliam nudged Elizabeth slightly; she smiled and, recalling the hasty battle plan he had sketched out for her in the dirt of the lane, said, “I must beg your advice on that head, Lady Catherine. I have written to my father, and mentioned the existence of Colonel Fitzwilliam. From that I am sure he has drawn his own conclusions, but he could hardly give his permission to a man he had never before met.”

“A very reasonable objection,” said Lady Catherine. “I think your father a very sensible man. Of course he must meet Fitzwilliam himself, and then there can be no objections to the match. You will of course invite him— perhaps not here—” her relief in the match did not, as Elizabeth expected, extend so far as to welcome a mere Mr. Bennet to stay at Rosings “—but to London? You have family, there, I think.” She did not wait for Elizabeth’s response before continuing on, “Yes, you will ask him to meet you there. Dawson has very disobligingly broken his leg, but has promised me his son will be well able to drive the barouche-box, should I require it— I wonder, Fitzwilliam, have you told Darcy of your engagement?”

“I thought it right to tell you first, ma’am.”

Lady Catherine was excessively pleased by this and not only said as much, but repeated it many times before she returned to her original subject. “I cannot think Darcy will be very pleased. He is not, like myself, quite... privy to the facts of the case that make this match more unexceptional than it would appear to strangers. It is best we do not rely upon his carriage. Yes, I think I ought to inform your the rest of the family myself as to the happy arrangement I have made for you; I shall take you both myself. And Anne of course. Mrs. Jenkins is too large to make a comfortable fifth, so she must stay behind. But in that, I think, I may be doing a favor to Mrs. Collins’s sister, for I am robbing her of her traveling companion. I did not like the idea of  _ two  _ young ladies traveling alone;  _ one  _ young lady on her own fills me with alarm. Dawkins will, I think, be better then and will drive Miss Lucas and Mrs. Jenkins to London, when Miss Lucas is ready to depart.”

As Colonel Fitzwilliam had no carriage, this was exactly what he had hoped— especially given how uncomfortable it would be to ride to London with Darcy. He accepted with all fitting expressions of gratitude, and listened to Lady Catherine’s guesses at their courtship with an amusement that could be easily mistaken as good humor. Elizabeth was happy enough that her left hand was cradled in the crook of Colonel Fitzwilliam’s arm. 

She was too emotionally exhausted for much else. Realizing one’s hitherto prized and unclouded judgement was actually blinded by pride and prejudice would have been exhausting enough for one day; having to swing from that emotional low point to what she had always been taught was the apex of human joy, definitely finding one’s soulmate, was more than she could bear with equanimity. Tears felt too perilously close to the surface, and she had already spent most of the morning crying on Colonel Fitzwilliam out of vexation (and joy, after she had nearly tackled him in the lane when accepting his proposal). 

Lady Catherine neatly disposed of Colonel Fitzwilliam’s emotional trajectory and said, “Miss Bennet, your part in this is still something of a mystery. I am sure I mentioned my own brother and his family many times before dear Fitzwilliam came on his yearly visit, and yet you evinced no real excitement at the prospect of his arrival.”

“Your Ladyship referred to your brother as the Earl of Matlock and his children,” said Elizabeth. She could not keep herself from adding, “As is only fitting with your ladyship’s great sense of propriety.”

“Indeed. I wonder....”

For a moment Elizabeth thought Lady Catherine would demand to see her soulmark— Lady Catherine had a manner even equal to that rudeness— but instead she contented herself with, “I suppose, Miss Bennet, that you likewise have a last name upon your wrist?”

“Indeed I do, madam.”

“Fitzwilliam’s?”

“It could hardly be otherwise, if she has agreed to marry me,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam, with enough good humor to take the sting out of the rebuke. “I assure you Aunt Catherine, we are matched in every particular.” When she did not quite grasp what he meant by that, Colonel Fitzwilliam sighed and said, “We have each others’ last names, Aunt Catherine. Like Aunt Anne and Uncle Darcy.”

“Yes, I was on the point of making such a comparison. I feel that I did so when your mark first appeared, but as Anne was so incautious as to faint—” 

Not very eager to get into the story once again, Colonel Fitzwilliam said, “Do you think to stay with my father, Aunt Catherine?”

“Of course not, Fitzwilliam. My own town house is a great deal more comfortable. Lady Stornoway keeps making improvements to your father’s that I cannot think are at all  _ improvements _ .”

“Perhaps you had better write to the servants, so that all is prepared,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam. “I ought to walk Miss Bennet back to the Parsonage, so that she may write to her father and ask him to come to London; and, after that, I ought to write to my father as well.”

“A very good course of action,” was Lady Catherine’s magnanimous response, and they were free to go. 

Elizabeth risked propriety by leaning her head on Colonel Fitzwilliam’s shoulder, when they were out of view of Rosings. 

“Poor Miss Bennet,” said he, smiling down at her. “My family seems determined to put you through your paces; for that I am sorry.” 

“Oh no,” said she, tiling her head back to smile up at him, “it reassures me that my relations are not the only ones that shall try our tempers. I was only tired! It is not everyday that one must confront one’s flaws in the presence of the person with whom one hopes to marry.”

“You do not think it a necessary part of falling in love?”

“I have never fallen in love before, so that I cannot tell you.”

His smile softened. “My dear Miss Bennet. I hope you will not vex yourself unduly. You know my flaws, do you not?”

“The few that exist, yes. They hardly amount to anything before my misjudgments.”

“But you are still glad we are engaged?”

“Oh, immensely so!”

“Then believe that I feel the same— that is, that the flaws you revealed to me seem small, in comparison with my own.”

Elizabeth blushed and hid beneath the brim of her bonnet.

After a moment, Colonel Fitzwilliam said, “I am sorry to press upon this point but there is one flaw in my character that I cannot believe you accept, particularly after Lady Catherine was so kind as to remind me how I caused perhaps one of the worst family scandals of my generation.”

“Poor Fitzwilliam,” said Elizabeth, looking up at him. “Was it as bad as Lady Catherine made it out to be?”

“More-or-less. Before I changed everything, there was the most absurd rigmarole about soulmarks appearing. The whole family— my younger siblings and cousins excepted— were gathered around the breakfast table on my birthday. I pulled back my sleeve, sure this would be a repetition of my brother’s birthday from four years before, and felt the blood quite drain from my face. I knew it was bad, but had no real idea how it would distress everyone. My father had sponsored bills in the Lords, to make civil partnerships easier to obtain; my mother was loudly supportive of Signoria Di Rossi and had her sing in her salon when the Royal Opera refused to let her onstage.” 

Elizabeth found this something of a non sequitur and said so.

“It got out, about a year or two before my sixteenth birthday, that Signori Di Rossi soulmate was comedienne known for her breeches roles. It am glad to hear it was successfully hushed up, but I recall it being a very great scandal when I was in London on the long vac from school.” He looked worried; there were lines about his mouth and eyes Elizabeth had previously attributed to smiles, rather than any sort of anxiety. “It is one thing to support people you do not know, who but briefly touch upon your life and are gone again; it is quite another to accept so grievous a fault in your own relation. Everyone reacted as Lady Catherine so... exactly detailed, though far from assuring my mother all would be well, she began detailing all the Harley Street doctors that could fix the imbalance of humors that lead to only a partial mark appearing. I do not know what woman’s name begins with ‘Bennet,’ but my father took some comfort in the notion. I am grateful that the final doctor suggested I only wanted toughening up and ought to go into the army instead of going to university. It did not change my soul mark, but it provided me with purpose and a sense that I was not alone. Many men join the services in the hopes of traveling to the countries where their soulmates may be, and a great deal of men in my... particular circumstances end up in the army or the navy. There is greater licence there than at home. 

“But that is not to say that there were no consolations. Outside of my immediate family, and my aunts and uncles, no one knew— why Darcy himself did not know until last fall. And my sister Honoria was not treated quite as badly two years later, when she awoke with what was unquestionably a woman’s name on her wrist. My mother only sighed and asked the room at large why God saw fit to punish  _ two  _ of her children this way, my father hid behind his newspaper, and no one fainted at all. I grant you, Lady Anne was dead then, so she could not faint, and she only fainted when I was sixteen because she was consumptive and was more often in a swoon than fully awake.”

This was worse than she thought; Elizabeth felt tears start to her eyes.

“A fine fiancé I am,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam. “I keep making you cry.”

“I am merely distressed at how your family treated you. I was given to think London was more accepting than that.”

“All of my sisters are, as is my sister-in-law. Her brother Lawrence is in much the same situation as myself. But as Honoria has said many times, there is such a small segment of the population that find soulmates among their own sex, it is easier to ignore them than make any effort at integration. When one is forced to face the reality of it, one digs in one’s heels and insists upon normality. I imagine it is worse in the country.”

“I cannot claim Hertfordshire as a utopia, but we are not as backwards in our attitudes as you seem to fear. In Meryton, the principal milliner has a male soulmate. When he first came back from London with his soulmate, the neighborhood was in more of an uproar than it had been over the death of Louis XVI. The parson told anyone who would listen he would not conduct a service of... what is the euphemism again?”

“Civil partnership.”

“Yes, that, for the two men in question. But oh, the endless repetitions of shock when it was discovered Mr. Brown and Mr. Goring had taken precautions before braving the wilds of Hertfordshire, and gotten their civil partnership in the naval dockyards! There was some talk of a boycott. My father, as you shall soon see yourself, likes to amuse himself at the expense of his neighbors, and decreed that unless we bought our bonnets and shoe roses from Mr. Brown, we should have none. My mother’s understanding is... scanty, and she was easily persuaded to view Mr. Brown as tragic a figure as Romeo. I admit I was my father’s principal accomplice in this; we had then started in on the Iliad and I was very invested in how Achilles avenged his soulmate Patroclus. Poor Mr. Brown was no Achilles, but he was very kind to an overeducated thirteen-year-old girl who came into his shop every day for a month, making a point to buy something with ready money, even if it was merely a haypenny's worth of ribbon. The neighborhood was eventually brought to accept them, for the other milliner had not the same quality of goods on sale, and now we even have a pair of female soulmates as the town’s chief mantua-makers, and another pair of male soulmates as the chief chandlers.”

Colonel Fitzwilliam looked more relaxed but there were still faint lines of tension about his mouth. “I am glad to hear of that, but have you met anyone like myself?”

“Only in the classics,” said Elizabeth, “and in accounts of Lord Byron— but really, I do not see how your very reasonable attempts to find your soulmate should offend. As long as you are not wishing I were a man—”

“I would not change you in any possible way,” said he, so fervently Elizabeth was moved to stop walking and put her hand to his cheek. He leaned into it as he haltingly explained, “I find little sympathy from either half of society; each faction tends to think I am lying about one half of my nature, when they are feeling kindly disposed, and think me as a deviant the likes of Lord Byron, when they are not. In reality, I am sadly conventional. I want only to be left alone to have a family and an occupation.”

Elizabeth slid her hand to the back of his neck, so she could pull him down for a chaste kiss. It was very short, no longer than the forfeits Elizabeth had paid during winter parlor games, and yet he looked at her with such startled wonder it could have been the sort of kiss that broke curses in fairy tales. 

“Fitzwilliam,” said Elizabeth, with mock solemnity, “I am not society. I think you my soulmate. That is it and that is all.”

“I should very much like to kiss you for that, Miss Bennet.”

“Then do.”

And thus Mr. Darcy found them kissing in the middle of the lane.

They sprang apart guiltily. 

“Um,” said Elizabeth.

“Darcy,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam, recovering more quickly. “I had wanted a word with you— but I think I should first tell you that this morning I asked Miss Bennet to marry me and she was so good as to accept.”

Mr. Darcy stared at them both as if they had announced their plan to assassinate the Prince Regent with a banana. 

“I should like to apologize,” Elizabeth forced herself to say. “Colonel Fitzwilliam explained certain circumstances to me that I had not known— I was wrong, extremely wrong, to have believed Mr. Wickham, and to have based my understanding of your character on his lies. I can only credit my own vanity for such a misperception, and I must heartily beg your pardon.”

Mr. Darcy looked at her without seeming to hear her, while methodically folding a sealed letter into eighths.

“Darcy, are you well?” Colonel Fitzwilliam asked, in mingled exasperation and kindness. “I know this must bring back memories of last summer, and I appreciate your concern, but there is no doubt in this case. You saw yourself that I bear Miss Bennet’s last name and—” he looked to Elizabeth for permission, before adding “— and I think you saw that she bears mine. And though I know all you said to Miss Bennet yesterday because of the ah, events of last summer, I must tell you that you went about it in the worst possible way. That was not the behavior of a gentleman. Are you so convinced that only you know the truth of things? Even if you doubt Miss Bennet, I have two years on you; I think I know what I am about.”

“I am sorry,” said Darcy, mechanically, putting the letter- now folded neatly into thirty-seconds- into the pocket of his coat. “My interference was kindly meant and I have felt nothing but regret since that interview.”

The awkwardness was a little too much for Elizabeth’s fragile equanimity. In some real fear of becoming like her mother and begging everyone to have some compassion on her poor nerves, she said, “Thank you, Mr. Darcy, you are more generous to me than I deserve.” Colonel Fitzwilliam looked inclined to dispute this, so she hastily added, “I shall leave you both; I must to the Parsonage, before Charlotte thinks I have been murdered by highwaymen or the like.”

Colonel Fitzwilliam pointedly said he would call on her tomorrow before walking on with Darcy and remonstrating with him quite heatedly. 

Elizabeth was grateful to have some time to compose herself before seeing Charlotte and Maria, but it was insufficient; upon Maria’s innocent, “You look monstrous unwell, Lizzy!” she found she had no social resources left and decided to sleep until it was nearly time to dress for dinner. She awoke groggy, but with renewed reserves of mental fortitude, and could answer Charlotte’s polite knock on the door with, “Oh do come in Charlotte, I have a great deal to tell you!”

Charlotte was a most appreciative audience, for she really felt she had made the match herself, and she had never been inclined to think well of Mr. Wickham. Elizabeth left out the details of Colonel Fitzwilliam’s early difficulties with his soul mark and Georgiana Darcy’s misfortunes in the retelling, but it sufficed for Charlotte that a soul mark reading ‘Bennet’ was exceedingly awkward for a man to bear, and that Mr. Wickham was a fortune hunter who had taken three thousand pounds instead of a living, and insisted upon the living anyways.

“I told you not to let your partiality for Wickham blind you,” said Charlotte, perched primly on the edge of the bed. 

Elizabeth, leaning against the headboard, with her legs drawn up to her chest, nodded tiredly. “I know, I ought to have listened to you. Instead, I let vanity rather than reason hold the reigns, and I begin my engagement by quarreling with my fiance’s favorite relation. It shall be vastly uncomfortable.”

“Especially since it was Mr. Darcy,” said Charlotte, dryly. “I cannot imagine how awkward he will now become.”

“It is beyond imagining.”

 

***

 

Elizabeth spent the rest of the evening writing letters, while being gently interrogated by Maria, whenever Charlotte was out of the room, checking on a jam that would not set. 

“Did you know immediately?” asked Maria, as Elizabeth hesitated after her ‘ _ Dear Papa _ .’

“Know what, Maria?”

“That Colonel Fitzwilliam was  _ the one _ ?”

“No, I did not. The possibility did not escape me, but I was not certain, no. It is difficult to be, in general.” 

This letter would not come as easily as the one to Jane, which had flowed from her pen with the rapidity of her thought, and to her aunt and uncle Gardiner, which, being a more detailed account of Colonel Fitzwilliam’s courtship, had cheered her enormously to write. She set it aside and wondered if she should write to her mother and younger sisters. Elizabeth was still mortified that their behavior had ruined Jane’s prospects, and did not entirely trust them to keep silent on news that would send them into paroxysms of silliness— 

“When did you know?” interrupted Maria.

“Know what Maria?”

“That he was  _ the one _ ?”

“To tell you the truth, I did not really love him until I was angry, and he said it was justified.” This seemed ridiculous, but Elizabeth had no better answer. But it would not fill Maria’s empty but receptive mind. Maria wanted only someone to reassure her of the world, and that she was taking her place well in it. If someone spoke with enough authority, Maria would believe it and set herself to act on such advice at once. 

Elizabeth turned from her letters to smile at Maria.  “Laugh at me, do, but I meant it. There are moments that reveal a man’s character, and in that one, I think I realized that he would always respect me— and my feelings, which men generally cite as the reason not to respect their wives.”

Maria was wide-eyed at this revelation. 

“Where respect is united with commonality of feeling, taste, and thought,” said Elizabeth, remembering an earlier conversation with the colonel, “I do not think there is much risk of guessing wrongly.”

Charlotte had been listening in the hall at that and came in, saying, “And even if you do guess wrongly, you are at least married to a friend who will respect and support you. That must substantially add to the comfort of one’s own establishment, and guaranteed future.”

Elizabeth felt vaguely guilty at this, but Charlotte smiled at her and said, “Do not misunderstand me, Lizzy. When it comes down to it, a soulmark is nothing more than a mark on one’s arm. You must decide what it means. You must choose how to act on it.”

“But what if you do guess wrongly?” asked Maria, anxiously.

“It depends, once again, on your choices,” said Charlotte. “Do you react with bitterness or do you make the best of the situation?”

“Or how you define a soulmate,” said Elizabeth, trying to recall all her philosophy readings. “We choose to call it romantic in our society, but Voltaire thought it referred to a person who would change your life, somehow, an idea that has gained remarkable traction in France. I think they consider it rather freeing that they need not marry their soulmate. And the ancient Greeks thought a soulmark signified the truest and greatest friend a person could possess— though I should clarify that as ‘the Greeks after Plato.’ Alcibiades certainly considered the soulmark to be a physical bond. Plato-through-Socrates thought one’s mark ought to be the only physical manifestation of a spiritual bond. I recall reading that the Iroquois consider a soulmark the name of some guardian spirit that acts as a guide through life and especially through dreams, and the Inca, who believe that people have two souls, think the mark nothing more than the name of your second soul, the one that remains within the body after death.” 

“In short,” said Charlotte, smiling, “it means whatever you decide it means. For my part, I think it....” She paused, considered it a moment, and then said, “I think society makes too much of it. I think it is yet another involuntary, external marker that one cannot change, and, because one cannot change it, we think it must mean something, and must define us somehow.”

Elizabeth was fascinated to hear this and begged for Charlotte to continue, “for I think you have thought more on this subject than most.”

“Indeed I have, for I am satisfied by none of the traditional explanations. I think a soulmark is merely a signpost— a warning of something significant. You must choose how and why.” 

Maria considered this with great solemnity, flattered to have been allowed part in a grown-up discussion.

Elizabeth whispered to Charlotte, “But in your case—”

“I choose,” said Charlotte, after a moment, “to think God, or the universe, or whomever has let me know that I may safely trust in my own judgment and premonitions. I need no warning; I am prepared for whatever will happen.”

“You are,” said Elizabeth, pressing her hand. “I have never known anyone so pragmatic. Charlotte, I daresay you could survive an apocalypse.”

“I rather think I would,” said Charlotte, smiling, “as long as we are not relying on my jams to suppliment the blighted harvest after the sun has been extinguished. Really, it refuses to be anything but watery juice.”    

Rather cheered by this, Elizabeth could at last manage the letter her father required:

_ Dear Papa, _

_ I am sure you drew your own inferences from my last, where I stumbled upon the existence of one Colonel Richard Fitzwilliam. I like him a great deal. He is a most gentleman-like man, who reacts to my anger with assurances that it is justified; to my impertinence with laughter; to my jokes with jests; and to my opinions with respect. I do not know if the English, the French, or the Greek school is correct in what a soulmate is, or should be, or what precisely it means that our wrists match, but it has made me exceedingly happy on a day that would otherwise have been given over to bitter self-recriminations and deep gloom. _

_ I must beg you to come to London at the end of the week and gave me your opinion on the subject. I have reached a conclusion, as has Colonel Fitzwilliam, but it needs your expert opinion before it can be acted upon.  _

_ I do beg, however, that you do not tell Mama. I fear she would end the debate before it had begun, and send the poor colonel back to Portugal several months early.  _

_ Yr loving daughter, _

_ E. Bennet _

 

***

By the end of the week, Elizabeth had received a note from her father reading:

_ My Lizzy, _

_ Very well my dear, you know I cannot leave you to struggle alone with a question of philosophy. Your aunt and uncle Gardiner always tell me that I must stay with them any time I was in London, and though I hate to oblige them, I shall.  _

_ Your mother thinks I am merely spending a week or two in London with you and Jane, as I have installed a new shelf in my bookroom, and must purchase enough to fill it. You may rest easy on that score— though this Colonel Fitzwilliam of yours had better give me at least a good discussion of the  _ Edinburgh Review,  _ after the days of illogical insistence from your mother that I have no understanding what being a fortnight from her does to her nerves— this when she has told me many times before that I had trampled on her  _ last  _ one. I wonder if she will ever run out.  _

_ Yrs etc _

Elizabeth could not deny the uneasiness she felt at her father’s attitude towards her mother, at how, in his disappointment, he saw his wife as merely a source of amusement, rather than love, comfort, or companionship. She had to spend a long walk with Colonel Fitzwilliam discussing their opinions on everything from Shakespeare to slavery to reassure herself that this could not be her lot. When they did not agree, Colonel Fitzwilliam listened to her with every evidence of interest, and could be, with a little work, persuaded to her side, unless he had experienced something abroad that had fixed his opinion more decidedly. But even then Colonel Fitzwilliam did not call her naive or silly, he merely explained, straightforwardly, and with examples, why he thought as he did, and listened carefully when she replied in kind. She was at first afraid that this was merely gratitude for her acceptance of something his own family did not much tolerate (she was more inclined to think her easy acceptance merely an effect of her father’s eccentricity and teachings, coupled with her own relief that she would not die an old maid); but she was reassured of his very real interest when Colonel Fitzwilliam brought up some point she had made about Plato’s  _ Republic   _ and  Sir Thomas More’s  _ Utopia  _ by saying, “I have been thinking more about what you said— it was so interesting to me, I was willing to brave even Lady Catherine’s curiosity in order to get down both volumes. I shall spare you her opinions on Sir Thomas More, as they will only exasperate you, but I have been rather impatient to know what you think.”

There was only one subject on which they did not speak; Elizabeth did not ask about Mr. Darcy, and Colonel Fitzwilliam only looked angry when alluding to him. This perfectly suited Elizabeth’s feelings. She could not think about Mr. Darcy without such a sweep of shame and mortification that she grew mute. 

The one evening the members of the Parsonage were invited to play cards at Rosings Mr. Darcy was found to have returned early to London. The real trial that evening was Mr. Collins, who was vexed he had not arranged the match himself, until he realized it had all been the work of Lady Catherine. This settled his sense of self-importance, as he was able then to boast that he had played a vital part in her scheme, and, as it suited Lady Catherine for her scheme to involve as many people acting upon her advice as possible, they ended the evening greater pleased with each other than before.

 

***

 

On Lady Catherine’s stately progress to London, Elizabeth and Colonel Fitzwilliam sat backwards, which they did not much mind, since it meant they could sit beside each other. Lady Catherine and Miss DeBourgh faced them, as Miss DeBourgh’s health apparently required it. 

Lady Catherine spent the first of many tedious hours detailing every Earl of Matlock and his family since Charles II had created the title. Elizabeth tried to look interested, but as Lady Catherine thought it right to save all the living relations for another time, it was hard going.

Colonel Fitzwilliam never liked to be idle in the face of her distress— even so mild a case as boredom— and edged his hand closer to hers. Elizabeth shifted, so that the folds of her traveling coat masked the space between them from view. He gently maneuvered his hand over hers. Elizabeth smiled to herself and turned her palm upwards, so they lightly grasped each others’ hands. For a time the colonel was content with this, but then he gently tugged on her glove.

“It buttons,” she muttered, when Lady Catherine was distracted by Miss DeBourgh sneezing.

Though he did not shift his gaze from where Lady Catherine had last directed it, Colonel Fitzwilliam could not quite hide his smile. He managed to undo the buttons one-handed, and then rested his fingertips on the ‘Fitzwilliam’ on her wrist and the thundering pulse beneath it. Elizabeth flushed slightly in pleasure at this, and then again slightly later, when he traced the letters of her soulmark. 

Elizabeth, wishing in some measure to repay the comfort and pleasure he had given her, slid her hand back to they were palm to palm (as holy palmer’s kiss, she thought irreverently), and then back again. So her fingertips rested on the underside of his palm. She traced ‘amo’ there.

It took Colonel Fitzwilliam a moment to understand what she was about but then he smiled brilliantly and wrote ‘amas.’

‘Amat,’ she replied.

‘Amamus,’ wrote he. Then, unfairly taking another turn, wrote out a careful, ‘I love you,’ with his fingertip.

Elizabeth blushed.

Colonel Fitzwilliam took advantage of a bumpy stretch of road (and Lady Catherine's subsequent ire and shouts at the driver) to lean over and whisper, “Has my Latin much improved Miss Bennet?”

“You took some liberties with your translation, sir. Only a subject is implied.”

“Do you dislike it then, when I take liberties?”

The thought was not in the least unpleasant; still pink, she replied, “About as much as you dislike making me blush.”

To this he gave no answer but a stifled laugh and a flourishing ‘te amo’ on her palm.

“What is so amusing, Fitzwilliam?” Lady Catherine demanded. 

“Latin conjugations,” said he. 

Lady Catherine looked suspiciously at him. “Indeed, the second Earl was known for his malapropisms in Latin. But I wish you would treat it more seriously, it kept him from public life. Anne takes it seriously.”

Miss DeBourgh endeavored to look noble. 

Colonel Fitzwilliam squeezed Elizabeth's hand instead of laughing, and looked out the carriage window. The four hours to London passed much more pleasantly with this  _ sub rosa  _ commentary, though Elizabeth could not be really truly happy until Lady Catherine deposited her at her uncle Gardiner’s.

Jane had been keeping an eager look out and though she was too sedate and graceful a creature to  _ rush  _ down the steps of the Gardiner townhouse, Elizabeth was touched and pleased by Jane’s rapidity, and the enthusiasm of her embrace. “Oh Lizzy!” she whispered. “I am so very happy for you, and so very happy to see you! I cannot tell you how much I have longed to speak with you!”

Elizabeth embraced her in kind and said, “Oh Jane, how I have wanted you! But come, I must make one very pleasant introduction, and two unpleasant. The sweet first— Colonel Fitzwilliam?”

He turned from where he was attempting to mediate between Lady Catherine and her new coachman with some relief, and came up to them. 

“May I present to you my eldest sister Jane?”

“A very great honor,” said he, bowing. 

Jane always looked to like, and was prepared to like the Colonel from the outset; the little conversation they had, while Lady Catherine was too busy arguing about directions with her coachman to be introduced, cemented him in her good opinion. The fact that the colonel excused himself to keep Lady Catherine from firing the coachman on the spot only increased her regard.

By then Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner had come out, composed but curious, and said all was proper while Elizabeth made introductions.

“Your father is not yet arrived,” said Mrs. Gardiner, to Elizabeth, as Mr. Gardiner listened to Lady Catherine lecture him about the size of his street, a problem about which he could do precisely nothing, “but he shall be here this evening— I doubt very much that Lady Catherine will like to come, but should we invite her to dinner?”

“Perhaps we ought. Lady Catherine will see it as our duty to provide her with an invitation to decline.” 

The invitation was made, accepted by Colonel Fitzwilliam, and very regally declined by Lady Catherine, who gave the excuse of her daughter’s health, and her own obligation to call on her brother the Earl of Matlock. She did not scruple to invite the Bennet sisters, the Gardiners, and the absent Mr. Bennet to dine at her brother’s not tomorrow (for that was Sunday), but the day after.

Colonel Fitzwilliam’s gentle protests that perhaps his father would like to issue his own invitations was met with a haughty, “Nonsense Fitzwilliam! He is far too busy to concern himself with such details. I shall organize the party for him. I am sure you wish to make Miss Bennet and her relations known to your own?”

His expression softened as he turned to Elizabeth. “I cannot deny that at all.”

Lady Catherine was by now tired of the lack of dignity that came from standing on a street in Cheapside, and, as all Elizabeth’s trunks had been taken away by footmen, declared that she must away, and left Elizabeth to the comfort of her family. Elizabeth distributed sweets purchased in Kent to her young cousins, eagerly quizzed her aunt and uncle on what impressions they could have of Colonel Fitzwilliam after five minutes’ acquaintance while Lady Catherine was holding forth, and then begged to be let upstairs to wash off her dust. Jane accompanied her to the room they always shared when staying in London. 

“Lizzy, you must tell me everything!” Jane exclaimed, helping Elizabeth out of her traveling clothes. “How did you come to meet, how did he propose?”

This Elizabeth was glad to do but hesitated a little when she came to Mr. Darcy’s part in it. She did not yet know what, if anything she ought to relay. Some change must come from the strictures that had so wounded her, and therefore some acknowledgement of what caused her to change her behavior, but what could she say that would not hurt Jane?

She was saved from this by the shrieks of her young cousins informing them of Mr. Bennet’s arrival. Elizabeth kissed Jane and said, “I have more to tell but I must content myself with a word about Mr. Wickham: he is not at all what he seems. He treated more than one relation of the colonel’s very shamefully. For my part I am sorry I did not listen to you—and Charlotte and really everyone else. But come, Papa awaits, and perhaps I shall actually get to the proposal before we must dress for dinner!”

 

***

 

She did not. Seeing how eager his second daughter was to talk about Colonel Fitzwilliam, Mr. Bennet decided to instead have an extended conversation about a new translation of Sun Tzu’s  _ The Art of War  _ instead.

As soon he turned to Elizabeth with an arch air and asked, “And how has General Wellington applied this in Portugal? Has your new admirer anything to say on the subject?” Mrs. Gardiner looked at the clock and said, “You must ask Colonel Fitzwilliam yourself. He will be here soon. Lizzy, would you like me to send Kearney to you? I asked her to press the gowns you commissioned when you were in London last month; I think the red muslin turned out much better than we expected.”

Elizabeth expressed her thanks, struggling not to let her exasperation show. Her father laughed and kissed her forehead as he rose to dress.

“Come Lizzy,” said he, “don't be missish. After dinner I promise I will give you my opinion on Colonel Fitzwilliam, but I can hardly base my opinion on letters from you and Mr. Collins.”

Elizabeth was left with no very charitable feelings. She was, however, restored to equanimity upon the return of Colonel Fitzwilliam. He appeared more at ease than Elizabeth would be in a parallel situation. His manners were engaging, his conversation lively, his interest in ever member of the party sincere. Mr. Bennet was perhaps the least disposed of the party to immediately like him, but he soon found that the colonel was not a new object of ridicule, but a new accomplice in his quest to laugh at all the world. The two men were, for some time, so witty on Lord Castlereagh no one else could follow them. Elizabeth was surprised at how quickly the evening passed; they had left the men to cigars and brandy before she realized she hadn't said half of what she wished to Colonel Fitzwilliam herself.

But she turned eagerly to Jane and Mrs. Gardiner when they were alone. “And do you like him?”

“Yes, and very much for you,” said Mrs. Gardiner, “A well-informed mind that indulges in lively conversation instead of lectures is a rare thing; and for you, my dear, a necessity.”

“He is very gentleman-like,” said Jane, “and I like his manners. He and father get along very well.”

“Also a necessity,” agreed Mrs. Gardiner. Their approbation of the colonel’s manner and conversation was all Elizabeth could wish, and she had the joy of actually talking to him after dinner, and of having him turn pages for her as she played. 

“I like your father extremely,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam, as she mangled her way through a Mozart sonata. “I should dearly like to sit through a play with him— the worse the melodrama the better. If there is always something to excite his ridicule I dare say we shall not fall silent all evening.”

“No indeed! I am glad you like him; I had hoped you would.” She paused and said, “And Jane. Do you like Jane? I must insist you do.”

“I doubt anyone could dislike her.” He smiled at her. “Your aunt and uncle Gardiner I like also, and I am sure the children peering at me from over the bannister I shall also like—”

Elizabeth laughed but said, “I suppose you think me over anxious about my family.”

“After the lecture Darcy gave you? No. I know why you are anxious on that head, but today you endured a four hour monologue from my aunt, whereas I had a very good dinner and an even better conversation from your very elegant aunt, your very eloquent uncle, your extremely clever father, and your very sweet-natured sister. So far it has been only my relations who deserve censure. And...” he hesitated and added, “I hope you will allow me to make my brother and sister-in-law known to you tomorrow after church, and my father as well? I should not like you to feel entirely ill at ease at dinner Monday.”

“I should like that above all things.” They were a little while at settling the details between them, then Colonel Fitzwilliam made himself agreeable to the rest of the party. It was very late when he left; Jane yawningly and quite convincingly said she was tired and ceded the room ot the others. Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner lingered a little, to give their approbation of Colonel Fitzwilliam and to agree with Elizabeth’s scheme of walking in St. James’s Park after church, if the weather proved fine, but soon abandoned the sitting room entirely to Mr. Bennet and Elizabeth.

She at once pulled an ottoman before her father’s easy chair, and asked, “Well?”

“Well, well, well,” said Mr. Bennet, flicking his gaze from his newspaper to her. “A red coat! Lydia and Kitty will be jealous. And the second son of an Earl! Your mother shall faint.”

“I do not care for their opinions,” said Elizabeth, impatiently shoving her evening bracelet up her arm. “I care for  _ yours _ , and Jane’s, but I think Jane would love anyone named ‘Fitzwilliam,’ for my sake.”

Mr. Bennet folded up his paper and tossed it aside. Elizabeth had loosely folded her hands into her lap; he looked absently at the ‘Fitzwilliam’ on her wrist and said, “The more I think on it, the more I begin to believe that Voltaire was right. I always knew it was the application of education and reason that separated us from beasts, but my own experience seems to bear out his ideas on soul marks. It may well be just a person who is in some way significant to one’s life. I never told you this Lizzy, but my old wet nurse died two years ago. I would have died in my cradle if she had not come early to the room, and got me breathing again. I found out recently that she had the same name as your mother. Perhaps that is the Jane meant by this—” waving his wrist, so that his mark could be seen “— or perhaps it was your sister. Miss Jane Bennet was perhaps one of the most significant changes in my life, and, once she was old enough to take the housekeeping from your mother, she changed all for the better. Perhaps she may keep me from eating spoiled meat someday, or she will be the one to comfort me in my old age. It is impossible to know.”

“You do not like him,” said Elizabeth, shocked.

“No, no, I like him more than I had anticipated— more indeed than I thought I would like any man who proposed to take you from Longbourn. But Lizzy, I must beg you not to think you  _ must  _ marry a man because his name happens to be on your wrist.”

“Even if my name is on his? Papa—”

“Society is frequently wrong,” said Mr. Bennet. “Do not feel obligated to obey it in this case. I did, and I regret it daily.”

“I do fear society’s censure, but that is a different point—”

“Lizzy,” said her father seriously, “if you have any doubts at all, my girl,  _ do not marry him _ . Your lively talents give you greater odds of being trapped in an unequal marriage, and I could not bear it if you were to make the same mistake I have.”

“And if I like him— indeed, if I think I might love him?” Elizabeth demanded, feeling unequal to her father’s caprice. “Father, do not think I would marry a man just because his name is ‘Fitzwilliam.’ If I did, I would marry Mr. Darcy.”

“ _ He  _ was christened Fitzwilliam? The mind rebels. Mr. Darcy, your soulmate! He never looked at you but to criticize.”

“Oh he has done considerably worse— and I shall tell you of it once we have settled this point.” She shewed her father her bared wrist. “You see my mark; Colonel Fitzwilliam’s reads ‘Bennet.’ But I do not propose to marry him based on that alone. I think you yourself saw how much we agree on, and how our preferences and thoughts align. He is most truly the gentleman; I enjoy his company exceedingly; I— I do not know what proofs you require, father, to know that I am most sincerely attached to Colonel Fitzwilliam. I look upon this—” shaking her wrist “—merely as a bridge over the insurmountable obstacles that would have separated us otherwise. I think he would have liked me, but would not have seriously considered me if  _ this _ was not treated as so heavy an argument in favor of matrimony all fiscal and social difficulties fade— well, not  _ fade _ , never fade, merely  _ pale  _ in significance.”

Mr. Bennet looked at her with a sort of sad amusement. “A cynic ever, is my Lizzy. Would you have been affected by him, without the mark?”

“Indeed I should, but I would have been too conscious of the difference of our stations to allow any strong affection to take root.”

“You, Lizzy?”

“Yes, I.” She sighed. “I suppose I cannot keep off the other point I am most desirous to make. The day before Colonel Fitzwilliam proposed, Mr. Darcy paid me a private visit.” This was quickly gone over; Mr. Bennet chuckled at it, and Elizabeth felt, for perhaps the first time, a sense of shame at her father’s tendency to laugh at censure than learn from it.

“His criticisms were true,” protested Elizabeth. “I cannot think the inferiority of my connections is so horrible an obstacle to overcome, but the great impropriety of the imprudent and unguarded manner that Mama possesses and has passed onto Mary, Kitty, and Lydia in varying degrees— that is much harder got over. Colonel Fitzwilliam has never met them, so he makes light of such a difficulty, but I cannot help but think Mr. Darcy is right! The Earl of Matlock is active in the House of Lords, and his heir, Lord Stornoway scarcely less so; Lady Stornoway, his daughter-in-law, is a very respectable political hostess. Their disapprobation—”

“— would be enough for Colonel Fitzwilliam to change his mind? I doubt that, Lizzy. I doubt that exceedingly. Given his aunt is Lady Catherine, he does not strike me as a man to be put off by connection to absurdity and, unless I very much mistake matters, he is too much in love with you to let anything but a decisive break with his family keep you from him.”

Elizabeth blushed. “If you think that, then why do you talk as if I should be making a terrible mistake in marrying him?”

“You may not,” said Mr. Bennet. “I myself cannot tell his character from one meeting where he was exerting himself to be agreeable. I only urge caution. I could not bear to see you miserable, Lizzy, when a little effort on my part could prevent it.”


	5. In which Darcy apologizes

The next morning proved very fine, and Mr. Bennet contented himself to only one allusion to the Earl of Rochester when they arrived in St. James’s Park. Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner and their children walked a little ways apart, and Jane eventually with them, when the children became too interested in approaching the ducks near the edge of the water.

Elizabeth walked with her father, trying once again to convey to him they very real effect Mr. Darcy’s censure and Colonel Fitzwilliam’s revelations had had on her, and on her spirits.

“And so Mr. Wickham is a villain,” said Mr. Bennet. “That is interesting, but I cannot see what bearing that has on us. If I should ban him from the house, it would only make him an object of greater interest to Kitty and Lydia. And was not Mr. Darcy’s main objection to your sisters that were silly? That is evident to any who see them.”

“Not silly, Papa,” said Elizabeth, exasperated. “Imprudent and improper— so much so that Mr. Darcy, Miss Bingley, and Mrs. Hurst were easily convinced that, with such a family, Jane could not possibly be Mr. Bingley’s soulmate.”

“And how can they figure that?”

“Oh it— father, I wish you would be serious a moment; for I am in deadly earnest. Can you name any married couple that are from completely different circles? One reads in the papers, of course, of ladies of fortune traveling to Peru to marry Incan princes, or men of fortune sailing down the Nile to marry great ladies of Ethiopia, but _princes_ and _ladies_. Outside of Drury Lane no prince marries a shepherdess. Can you give any example of very unequal matches that were not scandals? Especially with common names, like Jane’s, it is assumed that one’s soulmate is one’s match in every particular and even slight improprieties are seized on as proof that someone is not one’s soulmate.”

“Fine, Lizzy, I shall answer you in perfect seriousness. I know many soulmates who are unmarried. We buy our candles from one such couple. And I know more married couples who are not. If anyone is ridiculous enough to judge Jane by her sisters, then he— or she— is not worthy of being married to her.”

Elizabeth was exasperated she could not make her point understood, but soon forgot, as she saw Colonel Fitzwilliam searching the paths for her. With him was a man so near the colonel in looks it was obviously his brother. Elizabeth lead her father over, saying, “I suppose we must abandon this discussion in favor of last night’s; you may observe how Colonel Fitzwilliam acts with his family.”

“It was the only hope getting me through church,” said Mr. Bennet.

Colonel Fitzwilliam brightened when he saw them, and his happiness in seeing them was so real, Elizabeth could not help but be affected by it.

She nudged her father who recalled enough of the properties to say, “Good morning Colonel Fitzwilliam.”

“Good morning sir,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam, striding towards them, his brother bobbing behind in his wake. “I am very glad to see you. May I present to you my elder brother, Lord Stornoway?”

Lord Stornoway bowed. He was a pleasant, not ill-looking man, who dressed well, and whose manner seemed halfway between Mr. Darcy’s unbending reserve and his brother’s well-bred ease.

“Stornoway,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam, unable to keep from smiling at Elizabeth, “I have the very great honor of presenting to you Miss Elizabeth Bennet and her father.”

Lord Stornoway looked as if he had been hit between the eyes with a small rock. “Fitzwilliam-- what did you say? I was not attending. Did you say _Miss Bennet_?”

Elizabeth curtsied. “Indeed, sir. I am Miss Bennet.”

“As her father I can well assure you of that,” said Mr. Bennet dryly.

Involuntarily his lordship clapped Elizabeth’s hand and exclaimed, “Oh thank God! Miss _Bennet_! I am delighted to hear of your existence— and of course to make your acquaintance. And you, Mr. Bennet,” he said, in an afterthought.

“I am happy to cede my share of your delight to my daughter,” said Mr. Bennet.

Lord Stornoway was not paying attention; he waved energetically at a pair of fashionably dressed women and called, “Marjorie! Marjorie, please come meet _Miss Bennet_!”

The lady in the blue merino walking dress parted quickly from her companion. She was extremely pretty, with brown eyes so large and melting they might have been stolen from a doe, and an air of artless sweetness so actually artful it seemed stolen from an ingenue on Drury Lane. “Miss Bennet!” said she, extending her hand at once. “I have longed to meet you since dear Fitzwilliam arrived in Kent. His letters have so sparked my curiosity.”

“His letters?” asked Lord Stornoway incredulously.

“I do not remind you to read your brother’s letters without reason,” said Lady Stornoway, very sweetly. “And this must be Miss Bennet’s father?” She took in Mr. Bennet with a swift, appraising glance, and seemed very relieved by what she saw. She inquired delicately into his home county and of Longbourn, and by degrees her formal graciousness melted into a more genuine pleasure. Lady Stornoway was apparently the driving force in this segment of the Fitzwilliam family; she dispatched her husband, who could do little more but stare at Elizabeth in profound relief, to find the Earl of Matlock, and begged an introduction to Jane, and Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner.

Though Elizabeth was prepared, from both Colonel Fitzwilliam’s account, and Lord Stornoway’s reaction, to be met with some relief, the degree of it so august a person as the Earl of Matlock displayed startled her. With her father’s commentary in her ear, Elizabeth was both amused and mortified by how eager the Fitzwilliams were to know her. She also began to think that Colonel Fitzwilliam had rather lessened the severity of the reaction his family had to his soulmark. She felt relieved, and guilty in her relief, that Colonel Fitzwilliam’s previous pain must pave the way for her present happiness, but was too much a cynic not to think, ‘merely remaining _Miss_ Bennet would please them; I do not know why I was in such a quake.’

She did not think long on this; Lady Stornoway invited them all to dinner, managing to maintain a delicate balance between respecting Lady Catherine’s promises and disavowing Lady Catherine’s command over the Earl of Matlock’s household. Mrs. Gardiner accepted, and Elizabeth spent the rest of the day failing to talk with her father about what chiefly preyed on her mind, hating every single new gown she had purchased, and trying to steal Jane’s attention from the children.

It wasn’t until they were undressing for bed that Jane could at last turn her attention to her sister: “Lizzy, I think we left off with Mr. Darcy visiting you at Huntsford.”

This memory had been preying on her all day. Elizabeth managed to relay what happened in tolerably good order, better, at least, than she had to Colonel Fitzwilliam, excluding the part Mr. Darcy had played in separating Jane and Bingley, but not leaving out how very wrong she, Elizabeth, had been about Mr. Wickham. “And there I must pause, before I continue on to happier memories.”

What a stroke was this for poor Jane, who would willingly have gone through the world without believing that so much wickedness existed in the whole race of mankind, as was here collected in one individual.

“I do not know when I have been more shocked,” said Jane. “Wickham so very bad! It is almost past belief. But Colonel Fitzwilliam would not be mistaken-- though perhaps Mr. Wickham’s character has merely been misrepresented to him?”

“By whom? Mr. Darcy, for all his faults, does not lie.”

Jane conceded this point, but was still unwilling to let Wickham be wholly bad. “There is such an expression of goodness in his countenance! Such an openness and gentleness in his manner!”

“There certainly was some great mismanagement in the education of Mr. Darcy and Mr. Wickham. One has got all the goodness, and the other all the appearance of it.”

“I never thought Mr. Darcy so deficient in the appearance of it as you used to do.”

“And yet I meant to be uncommonly clever in taking so decided a dislike to him, without any reason. It is such a spur to one’s genius, such an opening for wit, to have a dislike of that kind. One may be continually abusive without saying anything just; but one cannot always be laughing at a man without now and then stumbling on something witty.” She sighed. “It was just my luck I should pick my soulmate’s favorite cousin. Charlotte gave me a proper scold. Will you?”

“No, Lizzy,” said Jane, with stout partiality. “Of course not. How could you have known?”

“I could have behaved more circumspectly, and more kindly to Mr. Darcy. How could be be as bad as I assumed him to be if he numbers within his closest friends both Mr. Bingley and Colonel Fitzwilliam. Now Mr. Darcy and Colonel Fitzwilliam are not speaking. A fine way to enter the family.”

“You do not fear he could stop your engagement? Or that Colonel Fitzwilliam’s family will share his views?”

“No, you saw with what desperate relief they welcomed me. Did you hear father in the carriage? ‘I have never before seen a woman so acclaimed for merely being a Miss Bennet. If I had only known, I would have sent all five of you, and your mother too, to Matlock House.”

“He spoke in jest,” said Jane.

“Yes, and exactly in the way to excite Mr. Darcy’s censure, as well as the world’s.”

“Lizzy, help me to understand. I see this upsets you greatly, but the behavior of the rest of our family will not cost you your soulmate.”

“No, Jane,” said Elizabeth, forcing herself on, “but it did cost you yours.”

Jane had been standing, drying her hair by the fire, and now sat down heavily upon Elizabeth’s trunk.

“I am sorry, I did not know how to tell you this, so I have been putting it off.” She began with Mr. Darcy’s damning praise of Jane to Colonel Fitzwilliam, and then to the part Mr. Darcy played in separating Jane and Bingley, and the reasons he and Colonel Fitzwilliam had attributed to this interference. “And so Jane, you see I must— I _must_ make father see how this must result in change. I cannot bear to think that you, who are all goodness, should be punished for the behavior of your family. You cannot rely on society’s prejudices to smooth your way, as I apparently am.”

Jane looked at her hands and folded them neatly in her lap. She was silent for some moments and said, “I am grateful beyond words, Lizzy, to have you as my sister. I could not ask for a kinder, or a better champion.”

Elizabeth came and sat next to Jane, embracing her. “You ought! Oh Jane, you ought. I cannot make father listen to a word I say, if it means he must put himself out or be in any way inconvenienced.” She kissed Jane’s temple. “My sweet Jane, I ought not to have told you this. I debated whether I should.”

“No, no, I am glad you did,” said Jane, leaning against Elizabeth’s shoulder. “I have been reproaching myself for months now, and it is... it is a relief to know it was not anything I did, or anything I could do differently.”

Jane had the enviable habit of crying beautifully. Tears streaked down her cheeks without redding her eyes or nose. Elizabeth blotted her irritatingly perfect tears with the sleeve of her night-rail and said, “Oh Jane, darling Jane, only _you_ would have blamed yourself for this. But do not! Blame our family for behaving so ill! Blame Mr. Darcy for judging you based on your mother! Blame Mr. Bingley for being persuaded by him!”

“But there is no one to blame in this situation,” said Jane, thickly, “for everyone acted exactly as they thought right.”

Elizabeth would have argued that their mother had not, but then realized this was not true; their mother _had_ acted as she thought right. Elizabeth grimaced at the idea.

“Perhaps,” said Jane presently, “Mr. Darcy _was_ right. Perhaps I am not Mr. Bingley’s soulmate. Perhaps I was only excited to meet a man named ‘Charles’ who was nearer my age than sixty.”

“And perhaps you are right!” Elizabeth cried. “Mr. Darcy was certainly wrong about _me_.”

“But Mr. Bingley chose to be guided by him,” said Jane, “which may mean that he no longer considers me his soulmate, if he ever did. Oh Lizzy, how could I be so mistaken!”

“You are not! Or at least, it is equally probable you are not. Mr. Darcy got one match wrong and one match right, so the probability of his being right about you and Mr. Bingley is—oh never mind. Here Jane, stand up a minute and I shall get you a handkerchief from my trunk.” Elizabeth did her best to comfort Jane, but could think of no real way to be helpful without having to talk to Mr. Darcy again. For Jane, Elizabeth thought grimly, she was prepared to do even _that._

 

***

 

She was, however, able to put it off a little, as Mr. Darcy and his sister were not at dinner. Her own party, of herself, her father, her sister, and her aunt and uncle Gardiner, were met in state by the Earl of Matlock, Lord and Lady Stornoway, Lady Catherine and her daughter, and Colonel Fitzwilliam. Lord and Lady Stornoway’s own three young children were dutifully paraded in, and, after they were admired, were paraded out again, with as much pomp as a regiment embarking for Spain.

“I regret that the whole family cannot be present,” said the Earl, when this ceremony had finished. “My youngest is in Denmark, with her husband, and my next youngest and her husband are half the year in Tahiti and half the year in England, and my eldest girl is....” Here he hesitated, and Elizabeth remembered Colonel Fitzwilliam’s consolation-- that his next sibling had not met with as bad a reception as he had. “She is presently in, ah. In Aberdeen, with her companion.”

Lady Stornoway corrected him gently, “With her partner.”

Lady Catherine said, “Miss Duncan cannot be her partner.”

Lady Stornoway increased the sweetness of her tone, if anything, in saying: “Aunt Catherine, their soulmarks are a match.”

“I am not convinced of _that_. I am sure Honoria lives with Miss Duncan merely to disoblige her father. She was always a headstrong, rebellious girl. How does she know her mark came in fully, if she will allow no doctor to see it? It could very well be a last name, as dear Fitzwilliam’s was.”

“Aunt Catherine, no such family exists. Honoria’s mark is _her partner’s_ first name. In point of law--”

“In point of law! They have not signed any papers, or had any ceremony. Though I do not approve of Honoria’s choice, I did at least attempt to cast upon this sad affair what respectability I could. I offered my own parson to them at Christmastime, and they declined. I do not understand why they did so; Mr. Collins was perfectly willing to perform the ceremony and I ensured he spent at least an hour informing them of that fact.”

The Earl looked determinedly at the friezes on the ceiling, and Lord Stornoway, leaning on the mantle, looked as if he had been professionally stuffed and mounted there. Miss DeBough of course had no reaction, but Colonel Fitzwilliam looked resigned and about to speak; it was his ironic lot to keep the peace.

But Mr. Bennet had caught the inferences of this awkward conversation, and could not resist saying, “It is a pity; we should have enjoyed meeting all four young women and the two attendant gentleman. But as my wife and three youngest are in Hertfordshire we are at least symmetrical.”

Colonel Fitzwilliam hid a laugh as a cough. “I regret to say that our cousin and my ward, Miss Darcy, was too ill to attend. Her brother, Mr. Darcy—who I believe is known to you, Mr. Bennet, and to you, Miss Bennet— stays with her.”

“Poor Georgianna,” said Lady Catherine. “Her health is nearly as bad as my daughter’s. Though of course, Anne never enjoyed robust health, as Georgianna _once_ did. Anne has always been plagued with illnesses that confounded nearly every doctor on Harley Street.”

Miss DeBourgh looked modestly proud of this accomplishment.

As Jane and the Gardiners were still struggling to determine if they should be sympathetic about Lady Honoria and Miss Duncan, or should pretend the two ladies did not exist, Mr. Bennet took the opportunity to amuse himself further. He turned to Lady Catherine with a somewhat malicious enjoyment. “I cannot believe my good fortune in finally meeting you, Lady Catherine. We have heard so much about you from our cousin, Mr. Collins.”

“Indeed,” said Lady Catherine regally. “I am glad to hear it. Your cousin is a very respectful, and well-spoken young man.”

“Is he?” asked Mr. Gardiner, who had never met Mr. Collins, and had only the opinions of his brother-in-law and various nieces to go on.

“He preached a very good sermon this past Easter,” said Lady Catherine. “I only had to revise it twice, which is a great deal less work than I have had with other parsons. I am glad to be able to give you such a good report of your relation, Mr. Bennet. I am sure that must relieve your mind considerably.”

Elizabeth met Colonel Fitzwilliam’s eye and they both had to look away for fear of laughing.

Lady Stornoway’s smile became rather fixed. “Is that not nice? It is as if we are family already! Ah here is Stebbins. Shall we to dinner?”

The uneven number of ladies, and Lady Catherine’s own sense of her self-importance, threw off the seating arrangements. She seated herself next to the Earl, and, ignoring Lord Stornoway and the Gardiners, who ought to have been her conversational partners, interrupted any conversation she found interesting. Poor Jane tried her best to have a conversation with Miss De Bourgh, but Jane was not an unstoppable enough force against so immovable an object, and eventually gave up to listen to the conversation on fishing between Mr. Gardiner and the Earl. Elizabeth found herself seated closer to Lady Stornoway, with her father on one side and Colonel Fitzwilliam on the other, in the middle of the table. It became clear that the Colonel sat there to best mediate, when Lady Catherine and Lady Stornoway so outdid themselves in condescending to each other that all other conversation died. Mr. Bennet was delighted to make this discovery, and did his level best to destroy the Colonel’s work without ever being blamed for it, and without anyone but Elizabeth realizing he was doing so.

Elizabeth would have liked it better if she had a chance to talk to any of her future relations, but she enjoyed sharing speaking glances with Colonel Fitzwilliam, and was not displeased to see into what role she would fall at family dinners. It was not far different from the one she had already and it was perhaps this, more than anything else that made Mr. Bennet say to her, as he leaned over to reach a dish, “I am sorry to say, Lizzy, that you are right at home already.”

 

***

 

The evening had ended relatively well; freed from the dinner table, Elizabeth talked enough with all the colonel’s relations to realize she would mostly get along with them. She and the Earl had very little in common aside from a fondness for dogs, but he was so relieved to say his second son was engaged to a _Miss_ Bennet of Longbourn , _daughter_ of Mr. Bennet, gentleman _,_ she could murder his greyhound, and still be talked of with affection.

Lady Stornoway Elizabeth liked, or at least found amusing, and as she could not think of Lord Stornoway as anything other than a well-trained accessory to his wife, she was prepared to like him by extension. It somewhat galled her to see, however, why Colonel Fitzwilliam and Mr. Darcy had been such close friends. It made her feel obliged to talk to Mr. Darcy, even moreso than before.

It was with this in mind that she unwillingly accepted Colonel Fitzwilliam’s offer (seconded by Lady Stornoway, and then somehow both thirded and fourthed by Lady Catherine) to avail herself of the Earl’s stable the next morning. She was in no very good mood; her determination to talk to Mr. Darcy frayed her nerves as much as being ahorse.

Colonel Fitzwilliam unfortunately found her antipathy for horses hilarious.

“You are so fearless in everything else,” said he, as Elizabeth sat stiff and uncomfortable in the saddle. “Are you actually afraid of horses?”

“I have a healthy respect for them,” said Elizabeth. “That is different from fear.”

“It _looks_ very much like fear.”

“Appearances, you know, can be deceptive.”

“Cite your sources, Miss Bennet.”

The horse shifted under her, which caused Elizabeth enough alarm to drop the reins.

“Ah yes,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam. “You are clearly mistress of this situation. You are not afraid at all.”

“If you tell me horses can sense your fear, then I shall throw my hat at you. That information has never once helped me. Everyone repeats it as if it will.”

“Very well, I shall give you more practical advice: don’t drop the reins.”

Elizabeth gathered them up again, but spotted a tall young woman, built on a much larger scale than Elizabeth herself, and yet somehow endeavoring to take up less space, coming across the stableyard. Colonel Fitzwilliam saw her distraction and said, “You cannot escape this entirely, Miss Bennet, but I am not such a tyrant as to give you no respite. Georgianna is come— yes, yes, you may dismount to meet her. Let me help you down. Georgianna! Can Marjorie spare you a moment? I should like to introduce you to Miss Bennet.”

Feeling much more cheerful now that she had only herself to rely upon for locomotion, Elizabeth was able to meet Miss  Darcy with a smile and a polite, “I have heard a great deal about you, Miss Darcy, and am glad to finally meet you.” Miss Darcy, however, met her with the terrified look of a fox that has been cornered by hunting hounds.

“I should revise—I have heard a great deal about your performance on the pianoforte,” said Elizabeth. “You are the favorite performer of two ladies of my acquaintance, Miss Bingley and Mrs. Hurst; and Lady Catherine speaks of your proficiency at length.”

Miss Darcy looked only slightly more at ease.

Colonel Fitzwilliam said, “Miss Bennet is fond of music, too.”

This did not much help Miss Darcy.

Colonel Fitzwilliam tried a different approach. “I am teaching Miss Bennet to ride.” He turned to her. “I really cannot believe you never learnt.”

“A gross misrepresentation! I was provided with lessons; I merely chose never to return to them after the first went badly. It did not help that my elder sister, Jane, is perfectly natural in the saddle, and horses love her. But so do all living creatures, really; I have never actually seen it, but I am convinced that when I am not looking, birds fly down and gift her with bread and flowers, like Francis of Assisi.”

“That is because she is calm. That is why she is a good horsewoman, I mean. I cannot comment on the birds.”

“Nor can I. I can only speculate. Are you fond of riding, Miss Darcy?”

Miss Darcy managed a meek, “Yes.”

“How I envy you! But an antipathy for horses brought with it other consolations. My mother told me that if I would not ride, I must walk everywhere and I happily obeyed her.” For some time she and Colonel Fitzwilliam managed a conversation about the best paths for walking in London, occasionally receiving a soft ‘yes’ or ‘no’ from Miss Darcy. They managed to eke out words of _two_ syllables when Elizabeth exaggerated her poor opinion of horses, and Miss Darcy was shocked enough to protest it, and try to prove Elizabeth wrong by shewing how good horses really were if their riders behaved as they ought.

Elizabeth was not surprised to find it a family trait, this determined idea of right, which must always shew itself in action and any deviation from which was a terrible shock. Still, she exerted herself to be a good student, and even rode around the stableyard once without being thrown from the horse and breaking all her limbs as she jokingly (but at the same time quite seriously) claimed would happen.

“You see?” asked Colonel Fitzwilliam, when he lifted her off the horse again. “It is a simple matter. You must only have patience to calm everyone’s nerves.” This established in Elizabeth’s mind, a strong and unshakable connection between Georgianna Darcy and skittish horses, but the metaphor did not seem to be unjust— bearing in mind that it was highly unlikely Miss Darcy would, or even could, throw her across the stableyard.

“I am very grateful to Miss Darcy for shewing me the proper way to behave,” said Elizabeth, with a warm smile.

Colonel Fitzwilliam added, “She is a better teacher than I am. I dread seeing how badly it will go tomorrow, when I must give the lesson on my own.”

“Perhaps--” said Miss Darcy, before blushing and falling silent.

“Yes?” said Colonel Fitzwilliam, encouragingly.

“Perhaps,” said Miss Darcy, haltingly, and very shyly, “you... would... if it is not an imposition. I have no obligations tomorrow.”

“I should be more than glad of your assistance,” said Elizabeth.

The next day proved easier, and the day after that Miss Darcy managed to work up the courage to ask a question without the colonel’s prompting, or even his notice. “Miss Bennet, I—I wonder— are you—are you engaged to Colonel Fitzwilliam?”

“More-or-less. He has not yet asked my father, but that is mostly because my father finds it amusing to deny Colonel Fitzwilliam the opportunity to speak alone. I rather hope this joke of his will cease by tomorrow week. Fifteen days is, I think, the longest my father can amuse himself with a joke of this kind.”

“Then perhaps....” Miss Darcy glanced worriedly at Colonel Fitzwilliam, who was talking to his brother at the opposite end of the stable yard. “Perhaps, since you— since you are nearly engaged to him, you might tell me if he and my brother are quarreling? They seem to be. That is, I only ever see Colonel Fitzwilliam here, and not at our home, and my brother does not care to accompany me here— and usually when they are both in London together, they do not go more than two days without seeing each other, and now it has been almost a week. It seems they are quarreling.”

Elizabeth sighed. “I am afraid they are. If I could only speak to your brother, I think I could smooth it out-- for it is my fault that they are quarreling.”

“I cannot believe _that_ ,” said Miss Darcy, very startled. “You are so nice!”

Elizabeth laughed. “I am glad _you_ think so. I hope you may someday convince my youngest sister Lydia that I am; she protests often enough that I am the cruelest beast alive. But, as it happens, your brother had reservations about my getting engaged to Colonel Fitzwilliam, the colonel took offense, I think your brother took offense at the colonel’s offense, and so on and so forth, forever.”

Miss Darcy thought quite seriously about this and ventured a shy and stammered idea that perhaps-- perhaps she might host a dinner “though perhaps a... a smaller party would not—”

“My father, my sister, myself and Colonel Fitzwilliam as the only guests, perhaps?”

Miss Darcy looked relieved. “That would make six. I do not think a small... an informal dinner of that kind— I could manage that I think. Mrs. Annesley has wanted me to practice at ordering a meal. The day after tomorrow, perhaps?”

“That should suit admirably! I am very much indebted to you Miss Darcy; I have been telling myself for days now that I ought to speak with your brother.”

They had been riding sedately about the yard; when they arrived again at the mounting block, Lord Stornoway informed Miss Darcy that Lady Stornoway was waiting within, and whisked her away.

Colonel Fitzwilliam lingered behind. “Why Miss Bennet! You have made it several times about the stableyard and are still alive. I am all astonishment.”

“Yes, a miracle has occurred. I did not _once_ have my brains dashed upon the ground.”

“I am pleased to hear it. Stornoway proposes to give a ball tomorrow week; my sister Sybil and her husband are come back from Tahiti. I hope you and your family have no engagements then.”

“Not in the least.” She feigned some confusion on how to dismount, so that Colonel Fitzwilliam had to put his hands on her waist and lift her off her horse.

His hands lingered at her waist when she was on the ground. “You seem very pleased.”

“Indeed I am,” said she, smiling up at him. “I have quite triumphed with your ward; Saturday she proposes to give a dinner, and to invite my father and sister, as well as myself. And you, of course.”

Colonel Fitzwilliam said, after a moment, “Darcy can hardly fail to be there.”

“We must meet sometime,” said Elizabeth. “And I really cannot bear the idea of being the reason you are estranged from your closest relation. I should wish to make your life more comfortable, not less. Oh, I wish you would not look at me like that; it begs for some answering impropriety, and I am a weak enough creature to give it to you.”

“I was hoping you were.”

Little conversation could be had after that.

 

***

 

The dinner itself was not so very bad; indeed, the food was so good it provided conversation when all other subjects failed— which was not nearly as often as Elizabeth had feared. Miss Darcy overcame her shyness enough to venture a sentence whenever it seemed least likely to be heard, but what really surprised Elizabeth was the degree to which Mr. Darcy— quite obviously and painfully— acted against his habits and exerted himself towards her and her family.

To Mr. Bennet he talked of books, to Jane of London, to Elizabeth of music; to all of them he imperfectly but sincerely acted with graciousness instead of condescension. The Bennets at first answered him confusedly, for they had, in their various ways, prepared themselves for incivility. Elizabeth recovered the quickest, or at least had the strongest determination to bridge any awkwardness, and dragged her father along with her. Surprisingly, it was Jane who had the most difficulty overcoming her natural reticence, and she eventually fell to exchanging very awkward smalltalk of few words and fewer syllables with Miss Darcy.

Colonel Fitzwilliam was so astonished, he could not contribute to the conversation until the second remove. At length he became aware that, however long the duration of this effort might be, it was one started in earnest, and began to smile and joke.

They were not exactly a merry party, but it did its work; on Monday morning, Miss Darcy came to Matlock House with her brother. Colonel Fitzwilliam and Mr. Darcy talked again with ease, and even stayed to help dismantle the gorgeous pyramids of fresh fruit Lady Stornoway served indoors as her usual mid-morning refreshments. Elizabeth was endeavoring to be better friends with this lady when Mr. Darcy purposefully came up to them and asked if Miss Bennet would care to walk, as the day was fine and he knew her to be fond of the exercise.

“That is just the thing,” said Lady Stornoway encouragingly. There was a consciousness to her manner which made Elizabeth think she had somehow guessed that Darcy and Colonel Fitzwilliam had quarreled, and quarreled especially over Elizabeth; but then again, if it had been obvious to Miss Darcy, it could hardly have been otherwise for Lady Stornoway. “Darcy, why do you not take Miss Bennet to our little wilderness by the hermitage? My father-in-law has had it re-planted recently, and I am eager to hear how you like it, given how much care you take with the grounds of Pemberley.”

Elizabeth accepted with alacrity, hoping there was an olive branch on offer in the wilderness.

Perhaps there were, but she had not the time to search for them. As soon as they were out of earshot, Mr. Darcy took a deep breath and said, “Miss Bennet, when I came across you and my cousin in the lane, the day after I insulted you, I had meant to give you a letter, explaining myself— giving some particulars about what happened to my sister last year, and how it has... altered my perceptions.”

Elizabeth was glad he said so, though she did not wish to get into it again, and said quickly, “Colonel Fitzwilliam has told me all. Sir, you must stop apologizing, I wronged you—”

“The fault is entirely mine, Miss Bennet; I will give you anything you ask but that. And I wish only to answer some of your accusations. The first, that I thought you were not Richard’s soulmate— I must begin by saying that I have never thought you a fortune hunter; there were circumstances that seemed to me impartial evidence that you were... the soulmate of someone else. We know so little of how this system works, and my father always told me that a perfect match must take into account the family into which one marries. His own mark read ‘Fitzwilliam.’ I had no reason to doubt him when I saw such another.”

“Of course not,” agreed Elizabeth, disconcerted.

“I think very highly of you,” said Mr. Darcy, unexpectedly, “so highly that—”

“Ah,” said Elizabeth. “I understand. You did not wish to see me, or see your cousin unhappy. But let me tell you, sir, you went about warning us in the worst possible way.”

“I did,” said Mr. Darcy, wincing. “I can offer no worthwhile justification, except that I was always praised for being honest, and you know well that I am not... apt at the social niceties that make honesty palatable, and even less so when feeling, rather than reason directs my actions. It is my own fault for not practicing those courtesies, as Colonel Fitzwilliam earlier remarked. I am heartily sorry for my manner, Miss Bennet, and for the things I said—”

“You said nothing that was not true about my family,” Elizabeth hastened to assure him.

“But it was not kind,” said Mr. Darcy, “and that I ought to apologize for the most. I do not know at what point I began valuing what is strictly true over what is kind, but that is more serious a flaw than the one I gave you at Netherfield. I have wronged you in ways I am not sure can be corrected— all the worse because they were wrongs made in ignorance. There is, however, one wrong that I can right: the second couple you said I had divided. If your sister is agreeable, I will ask Lady Stornoway to invite Mr. Bingley to her ball.”

Elizabeth looked her amazement.

“I had not realized,” said Mr. Darcy, stiltedly, “until I observed her at dinner that Miss Bennet is... she is more like myself in the expression of her feelings. You must correct me if I have drawn the wrong conclusion, but I believe that your sister feels deeply but cannot easily express it. Merely because it manifests itself differently in her than in myself does not mean it is not there.”

“Your estimation of my sister is correct,” said Elizabeth.

“It was not earlier. With that in mind, I beg you will allow me to explain my reasoning in acting as I did.” This she granted with alacrity. Mr. Darcy said, “I have often seen Bingley in love, and still oftener seen him convinced anyone bearing the very common name on his wrist to be his soulmate. When Sir William Lucas interrupted us at the Netherfield Ball, and alerted me as to the neighborhood’s general expectations that he and your sister would marry, I watched them both carefully and collected what I then believed to be very impartial observations. These I presented to Miss Bingley and Mrs. Hurst. They had a more thorough understanding of their brother’s character, and, I believed, could best determine whether or not Mr. Bingley and Miss Bennet were soulmates. Miss Bingley and Mrs. Hurst, for their part, did not believe your sister and their brother to be a match, and Miss Bingley told me she feared your mother would persuade Miss Bennet to act in a manner untrue to her mark. Bingley was disappointed when we told him this, and remains more disappointed than I have ever seen him before, but I would not have done it had I not really thought I was preventing greater misery thereby.” He glanced askance at her and said, “But, as I said, we were all of us mistaken in your sister’s character, and distracted by her circumstances. I am very ready to make amends.”

“I thank you for that.”

“The third charge you laid against me— what did Richard tell you of what happened at Ramsgate?”

“The whole. Mr. Darcy, I wish you would forget that accusation. It was wrong, very wrong of me to have thrown at you. I had no notion— that is, I ought to have known Mr. Wickham was lying to me—”

“But his air and address seem very sincere,” said Mr. Darcy. “And he shewed you his soulmark.”

Elizabeth wanted to pull down the veil from the brim of her riding hat and hide under it, but managed to instead look Darcy in the eye. “I should have known _then_ that he was deceiving me. What man of good sense and character shews an unmarried woman, entirely unrelated to him, whom he has just met _that day_ his soulmark? But he acted as if this were merely a shew of very great trust, because I and I alone struck him as a woman of superior understanding—”

“I would not have you blame yourself,” said Mr. Darcy gravely. “Georgianna spent all summer and a great deal of the fall doing the same thing. The impropriety was on his side, not yours.”

“Mr. Darcy, you need not say all this.”

Darcy forced a smile. “Of course I must. I have wronged you; I must explain why it was done, though it was done in ignorance, and take steps to address the wrongs and ensure they do not happen again.”

She was all astonishment. Though Elizabeth knew she had not correctly understood Mr. Darcy’s character, this apology was so generous, his good-faith so apparent, his efforts so obvious, she was disappointed in herself again for her lack of judgment.

“Would you like me to ask Lady Stornoway to invite Mr. Bingley?” he prompted.

“Would I— oh! Let me ask Jane first, but she was very convinced last fall that they were soulmates. I do not think that would change.”

“It does not,” said Mr. Darcy. “When one knows, one _knows_. My chief failing was in thinking I knew everyone’s soulmate, as a result.” She would have asked him what he meant by this, when Mr. Darcy said, “You may wonder why I did not tell you all this that evening in Kent, and then tried a letter--”

“ _That_ I believe I understand, if you are like my sister. You could not have spoken this aloud to me. Especially not when I had just berated you for doing what you thought was right! The problem, Mr. Darcy, is chiefly this: we both of us thought we had acted rightly, in the fullest understanding of the other, and could not believe otherwise. But we misunderstood each other thoroughly; we did not know each other after all. You may not be willing to accept it, but I am willing to admit my fault.”

“As am I.”

She offered him her hand, like one gentleman might to another. “Shall we forgive each other and be friends?”

Mr. Darcy took it, solemnly. “There is nothing I should like more.”


	6. In which I hope Darcy fans will not be too distressed

“I am afraid we shall have to alert your mother,” said Mr. Bennet, looking at the invitation Elizabeth handed to him. “As much as I should like to surprise her with the news that I took you and Jane to a private ball at the home of earl, I must take her raptures over my visiting Mr. Bingley as precedent, and admit my defeat in advance. She must be written to, and expected in London. I hope, Lizzy,” he added, when she looked inclined to protest, “that you have thought how to inform your mother that you are receiving the attentions of not just an officer, but a _colonel_ , who is also the younger son of an earl?”

“I am hoping she will be stunned to silence,” said Elizabeth, truthfully. “She did not think it likely I would marry at all, let alone so well.”

“I admit, my girl, we neither of us thought you would. I have had an unpleasant time thinking of how I should grow old— older, rather, without you.” This came perilously close to actual sentiment; he buried it with a joke. “And in addition to that, my favorite of your mother’s complaints must now be retired from her repertoire. No longer will she truthfully be able to complain that when I die she shall starve in the hedgerows and die in a ditch.”

“There is always the chance of that,” said Elizabeth, struggling against more maudlin reflections herself. “Colonel Fitzwilliam has no house or estate of his own; we have settled it between us I am to follow the drum whenever he must be out of England— though some part of the year I think I can be safely found in London — and it might be an amusing variation for her to die in a Spanish, instead of an English ditch.”

“There is that,” said Mr. Bennet, tossing the invitation aside. “It is a pity I mentioned the existence of five daughters total, for it appears they all have been invited. I always knew Lydia would not be happy until she had exposed herself in some public place, but I never envisioned so grand a stage.”

“You must check her, or leave her at home,” said Elizabeth.

“You speak most decidedly.”

“I do. Mr. Darcy has endeavored to check his behavior; I must endeavor to check my sisters’.” Though she knew it was difficult to in any way convince her father of doing something he disliked, she persisted, “If you are actually inclined to give your permission to Colonel Fitzwilliam, I will be related to Mr. Darcy. He and Colonel Fitzwilliam are such good friends that I daresay I will never escape his company. Do not, I beg you, establish early on that I and all my family will be nothing more than a trial and an embarrassment.”

Mr. Bennet was surprised by the heat with which she spoke and said, “Very well. I shall endeavor to impress upon your mother the necessity of saying little, and the other girls the necessity of saying still less.” After a moment he said, “Come here, Lizzy, you should know by now I will not deny you anything you are determined to have. The next time Colonel Fitzwilliam makes noises about speaking privately to me, I shall endeavor to be a little less deaf.”

Elizabeth felt her spirits lift. “You do like him then?”

“I wish to God I did not, so I might have some grounds for legitimate objection. But I must resign myself to the fact that he seems a very likely person to make you happy and to keep you from any shadow of discredit and misery, excepting the danger of his profession. But if that risk is no evil to you, it cannot be to me.”

Elizabeth was at some pains to contain her happiness in this pronouncement, embraced her father, and went waltzing out the room with the invitation to the ball. She was a little dismayed when she realized the inferences of her father’s inadvertant admission, and she was disquieted by the notion that she had been so depended upon and now must be so decidedly absent from his life most of the year.

“You look thoughtful, Lizzy,” said Jane, hemming an apron in the sitting room. “What is the matter?”

“Jane,” said Elizabeth, “did you ever think I would marry?”

“Yes?” At Elizabeth’s look she said, “I truly did, Lizzy. Fitzwilliam may be an uncommon name, but it is an English one, and you are fond of travel. I thought you had a better chance of it than say, poor Mary or Lydia.”

Elizabeth said, “A chance, yes, but not a certainty. Would you have been surprised if I had never married?”

Jane hesitated.

“Our mother and father did not think I was like to marry.”

“Mama did not. Papa never said anything. Although....”

“Yes?”

Jane looked down at her hem and pulled at it, to check her stitches. “After your mark appeared, he was more careful about our household expenses. I always thought that was because I was then old enough to run the household without our mother’s help, and he meant to instill in me some of the habits of economy mother was never taught. He has been laying aside a certain amount each year...though the amount varies, depending on what repairs are needed at home or on the farm, and if any of us were coming out into society.”

“What has he been doing with it?”

“Having our uncle Gardiner invest it,” said Jane, surprised Elizabeth did not know this. “Which is why I always found it so distressing Mama said our father would leave us to starve in the hedgerows. With so young and so growing a family, I did not think he could have set any sum aside before I was eighteen, but perhaps Mama thought he could and is still disappointed it took him so long to do so.”

“I thought we each of us could expect a mere fifty pounds per annum.”

“Yes, from Mama,” said Jane. “She is fond of repeating that; I think it soothes her to know we are not precisely penniless. I do not know how much father has been able to save, but with two daughters—” at Elizabeth’s unamused look she amended “—very well _three_ daughters, he thought would not marry, he had to do something. It is all put aside for the future; it is not to be touched or of use until he is gone. What have you got there, Lizzy?”

“A means of disappointing my father,” said Elizabeth, passing it onto Jane. “We are invited to Lady Stornoway’s ball.”

“Oh Lizzy,” said Jane, “you are not upset to be invited to a ball, I think. Are you still distressed Papa refuses to talk privately with Colonel Fitzwilliam? He cannot withhold his approval. How could he? Colonel Fitzwilliam is everything amiable. I think it is... it is only hard for him. Papa did not think he would ever be without you, and now he must adjust to the notion that not only will you live somewhere other than Longbourn all the rest of your life, you will not always be in England, either.”

“Must you be so reasonable and so beautiful?” Elizabeth lamented. “You must leave some virtues for the rest of us.”

“Lizzy!”

“Oh I cannot be serious for very long; I am too much our father’s daughter for that. I am grieved to think I have in any way failed him, that is all, and I do not like to dwell on it. I at least have not failed you. Have you thought on what I told you?”

Jane tried to find something else to do with her apron, but it was finished. She folded it up and set it aside reluctantly. “I have thought on little else. I... I think I should like to see Mr. Bingley again. I should like to assure myself that I was mistaken. If I see him, and we meet as indifferent acquaintances, then— then I shall know. ‘Charles’ is not an uncommon name. I do not doubt I shall meet my soulmate someday.”

“I think you already have.”

Jane colored and began hunting in her workbasket for something else to do. “It pleases you to think so, Lizzy, because you have already met yours, and you are good enough to want the same happiness for me. I know you never thought so, but it is in some way a blessing your mark is so unusual. You could not be mistaken.”

“You are no more mistaken than I am.”

But Jane was too distressed to be pressed further. Elizabeth hastily changed the subject. “Jane, I have just realized— the ball is this Saturday! What on earth can be made ready in so little a time?”

Jane was rather cheered at the idea of so engrossing a project. “Let us see if we have anything that can be made over. If not, I think we might prevail upon our uncle for some old fabric from his warehouses; that is where I got the fabric for most of our ballgowns.”

The rest of the week they spent in a flurry of cutting and sewing. Elizabeth was not distressed to have an excuse to skip her riding lessons, nor was she unhappy to have so concentrated a time alone with Jane— whom Elizabeth would see as infrequently as her father, in future. The thought was an unhappy one, but Elizabeth could not dwell overlong in misery without laughing at herself, or finding some measure of contentment. There were at least six weeks more in England, and Jane was a very dutiful correspondent; the separation would at first be as bad, if not worse than the one Elizabeth had lately had from Charlotte, but then they would grow accustomed to it.

To Elizabeth’s surprise, her father had really attended to her. He was not certain he could check Lydia and therefore wrote to Longbourn only that Jane and Elizabeth had been invited to a private ball, which must extend their stay in London a week more. Jane rather more considerately sent back a package of what laces, ribbons, and scraps of silk had not gone into their ball dress, and reassured Mary, Kitty, and Lydia that they too should have their share of London amusements one day. Only Mary wrote back, and then it was to declare that she did not want any.   

“That does make things simpler,” said Mr. Bennet, when Jane read the letter aloud. “I shall probably need to write to your mother when your engagement is announced, Lizzy; she will not be able to keep herself away from purchasing all your wedding clothes.”

Mr. Bennet did really seemed resigned to the marriage now; he even said, apropos of nothing, when Colonel Fitzwilliam had joined them at dinner, again, “I suppose you shall be dancing most of the ball, but if you find yourself at liberty the space of a half-an-hour, I daresay I shall be able to speak with you privately.”

Colonel Fitzwilliam was startled by this, but said with pleasure that he was not so energetic a dancer as to require every set. Elizabeth fought to contain her joy, but Mr. Bennet turned to her, and with a droll look said, “You are fooling no one, Miss Lizzy. Smile as you like.”

She did so and, despite the knowledge she must spend most of her year apart from two of the people she most loved in the world, she could not stop.

 

***

The Fitzwilliams had invited the Gardiners and Bennets to what they called a small family dinner, and what Elizabeth could not help but think of as the politest battle she had ever seen.  

Mr. Bennet was enraptured.

Lady Catherine was more inclined than ever to give useless advice that could not apply to the circumstances of her relations, and her brother the Earl inclined to act the _pater familias_ (a role none of his children were inclined to allow him when it butted against their own notions of right... which was often). Lord and Lady Stornoway were not in open rebellion merely because of how charmingly they phrased their contradictions. The newcomers added a fascinating layer of complications. Lady Honoria, for obvious reasons, got along only with Lady Stornoway and Colonel Fitzwilliam, and seemed to take Colonel Fitzwilliam’s engagement to a woman as an insult to herself and to her soulmate, Miss Duncan. Lady Arabella hated her father, aunt, and elder brother on Honoria and Colonel Fitzwilliam’s behalf. The very brown Lady Sybil, though a cheerful, good-natured person, with very interesting conversation, was thoroughly unequal to the task of smoothing over any tiffs between her relations. Her immediate and only reaction was to change the topic of conversation to something dull and inoffensive, where the argument was smothered to death in a flurry of facetious and irrelevant remarks. (She was aided admirably in this by Colonel Fitzwilliam and all living members of the older generation). All three ladies did not know what to do with Anne DeBourgh or Georgianna Darcy, for they were none of them shy or retiring by nature, and so ignored Miss DeBourgh and Miss Darcy when not echoing their praises. Darcy they treated with a curious mix of deference and impatience, for they they liked him better than their other relations, but had no real influence over the aspects of his character they found tiresome. The soulmates added complications of their own: Miss Duncan was an outdoorsy woman who prefered dogs and horses to people (not without reason, if this was an average family dinner) and therefore rarely spoke, Lady Arabella’s husband was a Danish gentleman farmer with very limited English and even more limited interests, and Lady Sybil’s husband, whose English was excellent, was inclined to think most, if not all English customs not only inferior to his own Tahitian ones, but patently absurd to boot.

By the end of dinner, Elizabeth and her father found they agreed with Mr. Omai.

“I have never seen so much bloodshed with only carving knives,” said Mr. Bennet, just before the ladies left the gentlemen (and Miss Duncan) to port and cigars. “Nor have I seen it shed so politely! Indeed, they seemed to thank each other for the blows, and if we called this a bloodbath, any member of the Fitzwilliams would look puzzled by it.”

This was indeed the case; Lady Sybil, with whom Elizabeth felt the most affinity because of their shared enthusiasm for travel, looked surprised at Elizabeth’s comments on such civil war.

“Oh no,” said she. “Everyone was vastly civil, much more than I was expecting, no wars at all. I must suppose it is because everyone is so relieved about Richard. He is not the sort of person to like being a revolutionary or going against the usual order of things, which I think is why I think he is so happy in the army, and is so much more cheerful now you are here. Honoria is a little angry that she did not manage to change his character, and make him as much a Jacobin as she is, but Marjorie will talk her out of it. Richard is not one of those great men who must be master or die in the attempt.” She looked embarrassed and said, “Though I by no means—”

Elizabeth laughed. “I have only known unimportance; I am not in the least unhappy to continue on such a path. Nor am I inclined towards a master!”

“Oh good,” said Lady Sybil, relaxing. “Richard was always being dragged into all our nonsense, or Darcy’s. He grumbles but he gives way, unless it really violates his idea of right or military policy. I dare say you will always get your way if you are insistent.”

Elizabeth’s pleasure in this news was eclipsed only by the pleasure of seeing Colonel Fitzwilliam in uniform for the first time. He was without the gorget that signified he was on duty, as he had yet reported in for a medical assessment, but the effect of military evening costume was not unfelt. Seeing but the well-tailored red coat with its gold braid at dinner had distracted her from all but the most heated engagements between the Fitzwilliams; she found it difficult now to look away from Colonel Fitzwilliam and mourned to think what her mother might say at this shew.

Colonel Fitzwilliam, for his part, was alive to her admiration, but still exerting himself to please her father; he contented himself to a smirk or two, and when they took their places for the first dance, a mild, “If one red coat can so captivate you, I quake to think of your distraction in the officers’ mess.”

“If all of your brother officers can contrive to look as well as you do in a dress uniform, I shall go so distracted I will never speak again,” replied Elizabeth.

“That is a pity, Miss Bennet; I wished to marry you specifically for your conversation.”

“Oh, sir! You will get too much of that. You must learn to revel in the exceptions when you can.” She contrived to give him enough conversation to fill the rest of the dance, and succeeded so well she drew the attention of other couples.

The fashionable friend Lady Stornoway had been talking to in St. James’s Park was standing in near them, and looked at them with more curiosity than the others; Colonel Fitzwilliam noticed this and, when the dance was done, said, “Miss Crawford! May I make you known to Miss Elizabeth Bennet?”

Elizabeth had a vague recollection of a Miss Crawford, who had laughed at Mr. Wickham’s propositions, and was not surprised to match this name and memory to this brown, pretty fashion plate in rubies and amaranthus figured sarcenet. “Miss _Bennet_ ?” asked this lady. “My goodness, Miss Elizabeth _Bennet_?”

“Yes, indeed,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam, smiling.

With a glad cry, Miss Crawford turned to him exclaiming, “No, Fitzwilliam, I do not believe it! I am so glad for you— and I am very happy to meet you Miss Bennet, happier than you can know. If no man has engaged for the next, I must claim you. Come, walk with me a moment.”

This invitation seemed at first frighteningly close to something Miss Bingley would say, but Miss Crawford, though obviously a society lady, was not nearly as supercilious. She seemed strangely relieved to meet Elizabeth, and took as much satisfaction in hearing how Elizabeth and the colonel had met as if she had some vested interest in the whole affair.

“Truth be told,” admitted Miss Crawford, when Elizabeth could no longer contain her curiosity, “you have saved me from a promise I rashly made, and have been regretting ever since. It is such a relief to be released from unpleasant business without having to do anything one’s self. And you have made Colonel Fitzwilliam happier than I have ever seen him, and he and I have known each other for... oh, seven years now? No, it must be eight, for Marjorie’s eldest will soon be sent to Eton.”

Elizabeth took from this the inference that there had been some kind of understanding between Miss Crawford and Colonel Fitzwilliam and was discomposed. Miss Crawford, seeing her expression, laughed and said, “Please, you must not ruin what I am already determined is a promising friendship, springing from very real gratitude, by already bringing to it imagined jealousy. Lady Stornoway has been my bosom friend since we were inmates at the same awful seminary, so I have known the Fitzwilliams as long as she has. The colonel’s unusual circumstances were not unknown to me, and one day we were both resigned and depressed enough to make a pact that, should we reach another decade without finding our soulmates, we should be unhappy together rather than separately. I have lately been realizing— now that I live in London all year with my sister— that I am actually not at all unhappy being alone. Indeed, I rather prefer it! I should be miserable married to _anyone,_ and would view it as an unjustifiable and unforgivable attack on my independence _._ I was annoyed I should have to give pain to so good a friend as Colonel Fitzwilliam but now I do not have to, and may live almost entirely without men! Everyone is happy and I did not have to put myself out at all to ensure it.”

Elizabeth’s mind was much relieved by this. She agreed that everyone was happy, and passed onto the more indifferent subjects of London amusements.   

Miss Crawford abruptly stopped talking mid-sentence when the dance had ended, and everyone moved to find new partners for the set. Elizabeth at first thought that Miss Crawford was searching for a partner, but seized Elizabeth’s forearm and called, “Lady Stornoway!”

Lady Stornoway was on the arm of her cousin, the Duke of Devonshire, and heading up to the top of the set, but turned and followed the line of Miss Crawford’s gaze. At once, Lady Stornoway gave some hasty excuse to her partner, summoned her husband to her apparently through force of will alone, and propelled him towards Elizabeth. “My dear, you have not yet danced with Miss Bennet! I am sure your brother would wish it!”

When they were all four clustered together, Lady Stornoway said, “Stornoway, you must step on Miss Darcy’s train soon as you are in the set!”

“Why?” asked her husband.

This did not seem to Elizabeth a very ridiculous question; the scorn and irritation with which Miss Crawford and Lady Stornoway met this remark struck her as excessive.

“My brother has got her to dance with him,” said Miss Crawford.

“Oh Lord,” said Lord Stornoway, with a groan.

Elizabeth looked around the circle quickly, a little alarmed that the news of Georgianna’s near seduction should be so widely known, and that Miss Darcy should still be punished for something not her fault, but Miss Crawford looked surprised and said, “Oh! I was forgetting you do not know Henry. Let us merely say he should not be dancing with a girl so newly out. He will upset her, at best, and make her fall in love with him, at worst.”

“You must excuse yourself and take Miss Darcy to the retiring room, to mend her hem,” said Lady Stornoway to Elizabeth, before flitting off with a perfectly serene smile to take her place in the dance.

Though bewildered, Elizabeth was not unwilling to obey. Lord Stornoway was too important a man to be denied any spot in the set that he desired; that he should decide to make space in the middle, next to Miss Darcy, was not regarded as anything unusual, or any more than a disinclination to walk to the end of the ballroom. Miss Darcy looked frankly terrified, though there seemed to be nothing exceptional about her partner, for good or for ill.

“Um,” said Lord Stornoway, realizing he must make conversation, when the dance had begun. “I, uh. There are... a... large number of... couples. Present. Currently. On the floor.”

“Yes. They quite fill the room.”

Lord Stornoway tried desperately to think of something else to say. “And it is a large room.”

“Aye, very large! Your wife has decorated it very prettily.”

“Yes.”

The dance took them apart from each other, and when they came back again, Lord Stornoway kept looking anxiously up the set, fearful of of having failed in his duty.

Elizabeth took pity on his hapless, modern day Macbeth, deprived of his lady, and merely leaned over and whispered, “When we come back again, take a larger step than you think you ought.”

He looked his gratitude and there was soon a loud rip.

“I am so sorry, Miss Darcy, it is such a sad crush,” exclaimed his lordship. “Miss Bennet will take you to the retiring room to fix your gown, will you not Miss Bennet?” Elizabeth obeyed with alacrity.

Miss Darcy seemed a little easier when she was away from the crowd, and had sent off a waiting maid for needle and thread, but not by much. She was still upset to nearly the point of tears.

“ _Thank_ you,” said Miss Darcy, in a small, sad voice. “I was so— I knew I ought to say no, but if I did, I would have to sit out all the rest of the evening, and I am sure that everyone would notice and be angry with me for it, and I do not even _like_ Mr. Crawford. His conversation upset me, and he reminds me too much of...” She blushed in sudden mortification.

“Would you pass me a pin?” interrupted Elizabeth, as if she had not noticed. “This is such a fine muslin, I am not at all surpriz’d it should rip so easily.”

Miss Darcy said, after a moment, “I do not think I like balls.”

“Oh no, pray not not be like your brother in that respect! Do not write off balls entirely because you have had a bad partner. The last time I saw him at a ball, he forced himself to dance with a partner he found merely _tolerable_ , and this evening I saw him dancing!” This did not seem to do much good; Elizabeth, taking the needle and thread offered to her by the returned maid, continued on in the same fashion, “And at that very same ball, I had quite the worst dance of my life, with my cousin Mr. Collins—”

“Fitzwilliam!” Miss Darcy exclaimed. “How long have you been there?”

Elizabeth turned with a smile, only to see Mr. Darcy, rather than Colonel Fitzwilliam. It was some work to keep her expression from shifting, but she more-or-less managed it. In a playful, rallying tone, she said, “Mr. Darcy, I am glad to see you! You must support my account of Mr. Collins’s dancing.”

He looked at first anxious and inclined to argue, but she was determined, and said, pointedly, “Your sister will not believe me.”

“Oh, yes,”’said Mr. Darcy, uncertainly. He came and sat awkwardly on Georgianna’s divan and agreed with the account Elizabeth merrily gave as she stitched away.

“And you see, I have not been put off from dancing!”

Mr. Darcy, not quite grasping her point, asked her to dance. Elizabeth was annoyed with him until she realized Georgianna might need some time alone. A glance at Georgianna’s drawn, unhappy face cemented this impression; Elizabeth knotted the thread and extended her gloved hand to Mr. Darcy with a flourish. “I should be delighted. Shall I come back and see how you are afterwards Miss Darcy?”

“I thank you, yes,” said she, softly.

Elizabeth was so distracted by Miss Darcy, she nearly failed to notice the arrival of Mr. Bingley and his sisters. If Mr. Bingley had not exclaimed, “Miss Bennet! Mr. Darcy! I am so delighted to see you!” she might not have seen him at all.

“Mr. Bingley!” Elizabeth exclaimed. “How are you, sir? You are very much missed in Hertfordshire.”

“I very much miss Hertfordshire,” replied he, promptly. “Caroline, Louisa, here is Miss Bennet with Mr. Darcy!”

Miss Bingley and Mrs. Hurst were loudly insincere in their exclamations of joy in renewing the acquaintance. Elizabeth answered them with equal falsehood, while keeping an eye out for Jane.

“How did you come to find yourself at Lady Stornoway’s ball?” Miss Bingley asked, affecting surprise. “I should think you the very last woman of my acquaintance to enjoy a crush such as this.”

Elizabeth was startled to realize not everyone knew she and Colonel Fitzwilliam were a match. She had lived in such an insular world of her family and Colonel Fitzwilliam’s, she had forgotten the rest of her acquaintances were not as privy to her concerns.

“I did not think your family liked the city,” said Mrs. Hurst, with affected concern.

“We merely prefer the county; we do not scorn the city outright. I do not see my father, but here is my sister Jane. Jane!” Jane had not wanted for partners; one gentleman entirely unknown to Elizabeth led her over to their group. Elizabeth had never seen Jane quite so pretty before, faintly glowing in white gauze de Turin over rose pink crepe, her clear skin slightly flushed from heat and exertion.

Elizabeth paid no attention to Jane’s partner, or anything anyone (including herself) said; her attention was all on Jane’s habit of holding herself stock still when anxious, and Mr. Bingley's manner, which mingled surprise, pleasure, and pain in equal measure. There was not time for much more; the musicians began, and Mr. Darcy spoke for the first time since leaving his sister to say, “I believe they are beginning the next.”

Miss Bingley turned to him with an air of expectation, and it seemed to Elizabeth that Mr. Darcy took some pleasure in saying, “Miss Elizabeth, are you ready?”

“I thank you, yes,” said she. To Jane she whispered, “Have you seen Colonel Fitzwilliam?”

“He was talking about _Tristram Shandy_ to father before the gavotte— oh yes, Mr. Bingley?”

“I hope you are not engaged for the next?” Mr. Bingley asked.

“I am not engaged,” said Jane, stiffly.

Elizabeth, Mr. Darcy, Jane, and Mr. Bingley made an awkward quartet in some of the figures, until they exchanged partners. Elizabeth found it easier to converse with Mr. Bingley, as did he with her.

“I had no notion you would be in London,” said he. “I am sorry, we would have called on you if we had.”

“We had not planned to be,” said Elizabeth, deciding on a partial truth. “I was in Kent until last week, visiting the former Miss Lucas— the current Mrs. Collins.”

“I hope you found her well and happy? I always found her a most sensible conversationalist. I was so pleased to hear she met her match.”

“Yes! She was very well; and content with her choice.”

“I do envy her that, a little,” said Mr. Bingley. “How nice it must be, and to avoid having to be continually guessing. I know more people than not do not find their match, and in such cases it is better not to marry at all, rather than marry through a mistake, but I suppose I am old-fashioned in that regard. I should not like to _never_ marry. Darcy can see no evil in that, nor can Caroline— or Louisa, really.”

Elizabeth knew she ought to say something now, but she knew not what, and regretted that she had not asked Mr. Darcy to admit his wrong to Mr. Bingley. “I, ah— I am not sure if Mr. Darcy told you, but I am come to to London because I met my match.”

“Miss Bennet!” cried he, really and quite honestly ecstatic at the news. “I cannot tell you how pleased I am for you! Are you engaged?”

“Very nearly! And I think you know the gentleman— are you at all acquainted with Mr. Darcy’s cousin, Colonel Fitzwilliam?”

“Only a little, but he has always struck me as a very well-bred man, full of conversation. What happy news! I suppose Darcy must have wished to wait for the banns to be read. He is so very cautious about matches.”

“Actually, he did not think we were a match,” said Elizabeth. “Mr. Darcy feared we should be unhappy, and it seemed to him better to be cautious than to take a chance. But what is the real risk in asking someone you care for if they are your soulmate? The worst that can happen is that your wrists do not match and you part as planned. And if you do not try, you will wonder forever.”

The dance parted them; Elizabeth returned to Mr. Darcy feeling she had done her best, and hoping Mr. Bingley would not be so diffident as to ignore her hint. Mr. Darcy said to her, a little abruptly, “Thank you for your kindness to Georgianna. I did not know how to act, or what to do. I have not the talent of comforting her.”

“It is not talent, Mr. Darcy! I have three younger sisters; I have merely had more practice.”

He managed a smile at that. “I have not had much practicing in apologizing either, but I will to Mr. Bingley. This evening, even, if you will see to my sister during the next.”

She agreed to this with alacrity and, as soon as Mr. Omai claimed Jane for the next, Elizabeth rushed to the retiring room. Georgianna looked more composed, but was not any more inclined to like balls.

“I can find your brother for you,” said Elizabeth, “if you prefer not to return to the room. Or send a footman for him?”

“I must insist on your sending someone else,” came Colonel Fitzwilliam’s voice. He came into the room, taking his eyes off of Elizabeth long enough to say to the waiting maid, “Rose, is it? Will you go and fetch Mr. Darcy and tell him his sister wishes to return home? Thank you.”

Elizabeth felt a giddy anticipation rush through her veins. “Colonel Fitzwilliam! I had despaired of seeing you while my father talked of _Tristram Shandy_.”

“The conversation took a number of turns and loops, doubled back on itself, took odd detours—”

“And in the end, did you merely end up where you began, with a cock and bull story?”

Colonel Fitzwilliam laughed. “Oh no, my dear, a far more satisfying ending than that. Your father said, ‘I suppose you are not to be put off. You propose to take away my Lizzy do you?’ We talked pretty seriously through a second dance and I think he was reassured by my answers. At least, he was reassured enough by the end of it to shake my hand.”

“Just like you were family already!” Miss Darcy exclaimed. “Or very good friends, at least.”

Elizabeth gave a guilty start; she had forgotten Miss Darcy was still in the room. She felt distinctly embarrassed to have brought up  _Tristram Shandy_.

“Ah, yes,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam. “And he gave me his permission. Miss Bennet, I am less inclined to the roundabout route than your father or Laurence Steele— shall I procure a special license tomorrow?”

“Fitzwilliam, that is five pounds for the paper alone!”

“And so?”

“And so, you asked me to teach you some economies; I should think myself a poor wife if we began with my costing you well over twenty guineas.”

“There are very few benefits to being a second son of a peer; let my ability to pay a ridiculous sum to the Archbishop of Canterbury finally be of use.”

“Are four weeks of banns so very dreadful a prospect?”

His look made her blush.

“A compromise then—I think a common licence will allow us to marry any day within two weeks, and is ten shillings.”

“No doubt the best ten shillings I will ever spend.” He seemed to think it improper to kiss her in front of Miss Darcy, but he could not be satisfied with only verbal displays of happiness; somewhat at a loss, he stuck his hand out, as if to shake hers.

Elizabeth took it with a great deal of pomp, and said, in the low, grave tones she affected when reading men’s parts aloud in the evenings, “Splendid arrangement, old fellow.”

“Corking,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam, gamely matching her solemnities.

“Capitol!”

“Yes, capitol indeed!”

“Good show!”

“Rather!”

Miss Darcy was startled into a smile and then ventured a shy, “I shan’t tell anyone if you were a _little_ improper.”

“Thank you,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam. “Avert your eyes Georgianna, I mean to kiss Miss Bennet.” This accomplished (with great fervor) he asked, “ _Must_ your mother come to church with you, or could we just run to the docks this evening and have a ship’s captain marry us at once?”

This idea was appealing, but Elizabeth weighed in the balance her mother’s screams of delight at the marriage of her least favorite daughter, to her unceasing wails at not being part of such a ceremony. “I think not,” she sighed. “Besides, I have nothing fit to be married in. It is unfair of you to look so becoming in regimentals. It provokes me to retaliate with equal sartorial splendor and that takes _such_ time.”

“I like this gown of yours very much indeed. Wear it again! We could be married Monday morning.”

“You wish me to wear jonquil crepe and white satin in the _morning_? Good God, no! I should force you into lessons on haberdashery as you have forced me into riding. I wish you would not smile at me like that, I shall not remain serious if you do. Find something else to do with your face.”

“Avert your eyes again, Georgianna,” advised Colonel Fitzwilliam.

 

***

 

The arrival of Mrs. Bennet and her youngest three daughters was an event Elizabeth viewed with considerable trepidation. She was measuring out a pattern against a spangled white muslin and wondering if an overlay of patterned net would be excessive, when she heard a carriage outside. “Jane,” said she, sparing the carriage no more than a cursory glance, “I think your Mr. Bingley is come to see you. Again.”

“He is not my Mr. Bingley,” said Jane, sorting through her work basket for white thread.

“Oh? What you told me yesterday of his behavior seems to contradict your assessment.”

“Lizzy! He was kind to me, as he would be kind to any acquaintance, that is all.

“Is it? Then who is visiting? Colonel Fitzwilliam is visiting the regimental barracks all today, and his sisters are calling upon their society acquaintances.”

Jane hesitated, then put aside her basket to go to the window and look out. However, she said something wholly unexpected: “Lizzy, I know not how it was accomplished, but Mama is come.”

“They must have set out from Hertfordshire just after breakfast,” said Elizabeth, in considerable surprise. “Did father write to them yesterday? I regret sleeping through so much of that day.”

“He wrote before the ball, so that he would not have to post a letter Sunday. I daresay everyone spent all day after church packing. I did not expect to see our mother and sisters until Tuesday.”

Elizabeth abandoned her muslin with reluctance.

“Lizzy,” said Jane, linking arms with her, “Mama is merely anxious for us all. It sometimes leads her astray but she means very well and she will be so happy for you.”

This was an understatement. Never before had Mrs. Bennet known such felicity! Her least favorite daughter the first married! To an officer! And not just an officer, but a colonel! And not just a colonel, but the second son of an earl! What a sly thing was her Miss Lizzy, sending letters saying only Lady Catherine's nephews were visiting with no mention of Colonel _Fitzwilliam’s_ name! But no matter, no matter, a daughter engaged! At only one-and-twenty, no less! How fine Elizabeth would be, what circles in which she would move, how much more able would she be to throw her sisters in the paths of their soulmates, and would she be married by special license? Surely she must!

This was all said quite loudly, and on the streets and the stairs before entering the Gardiner townhouse. Elizabeth was deeply embarrassed, particularly since this happy flow of well wishes, of future plans, of the gowns she would wear, of the clothes she must now order, of the warehouses to visit lasted so long and was so loud, Elizabeth had no respite from it until after dinner, where she begged leave to go write a letter.

“To dear Colonel Fitzwilliam?” asked Mrs. Bennet. “You sly thing, Lizzy, no wonder I got no letter from you about Colonel Fitzwilliam, since you were so busy writing to _him_! But you are engaged, I shall not say a word.”

She did, in fact, say many more, before Elizabeth was allowed to go write a letter to Charlotte. It was not an uninterrupted event, however; first came Mary, who had prepared some remarks taken chiefly from the dull and thoroughly unfashionable volume _Fordyce’s Sermons_. She read them all to Elizabeth, who pretended to attend to them.

“Your advice is so erudite,” said Elizabeth, when this was over. “I thank you for all the work you put into it.” And, thinking to do Mary, whom she always neglected, a kindness, added, “I shall need your fortitude when I am listening to the parson, Mary! Jane is to be my witness, but I should like it very much if you were also to attend me.”

Mary was rendered speechless.

‘Poor Mary,’ thought Elizabeth. ‘Perhaps she could be made sensible enough to be a companion to our father? There is no getting through to Kitty and Lydia.’ She spent some minutes trying to speak sensibility to Mary, but Mary was too awestruck to attend to her; Elizabeth eventually gave a few hints as to how Mary ought to behave before the Fitzwilliams, and released her to gloat over Kitty and Lydia.

Elizabeth had written down a paragraph of Mrs. Gardiner’s advice on jam making, when in burst Kitty and and Lydia, their hearts swollen with indignation. How, they demanded, could Mary be attending Elizabeth, particularly when Elizabeth was marrying a red coat? Surely they had made their vested interest clear! _They_ should attend Elizabeth, since she was marrying a colonel, not Mary! Elizabeth was not marrying an Oxford don or a parson— then Mary would be perfect— but _a Colonel of infantry_! How could she?

“My goodness, of course you will also be bridesmaids,” said Elizabeth, when the torrent of complaints had slowed at last to a trickle. “Do not deny Mary her seniority in being asked first; it is one of the few advantages she can claim.”

Kitty saw the sense in this, as Elizabeth pointedly first asked her, and then Lydia, and Kitty moved on by saying, “Do tell us all about the colonel, Lizzy! You only wrote me that Mr. Darcy’s cousin was a great deal more agreeable than he was, and you had much better conversation at Rosings since he had come.”

“And me that he was a colonel injured in Spain,” said Lydia, with a triumphant look at Kitty.

Elizabeth did take sincere pleasure in speaking of Colonel Fitzwilliam, and her highly edited account, from which Mr. Darcy had been excised entirely, was more than enough to satisfy her youngest sisters. “But both if you, listen. You cannot run wild. You must be quiet and behave decorously.”

“You are so stodgy,” complained Lydia.

“My father-in-law will be an earl. I must be. And you must be too, or you will be banned from ever visiting me.” Lydia looked startled at this, so Elizabeth continued on this theme, until it led her to what she thought her master stroke: “I have so far spared you Lady Catherine, but let me assure you— if you violate her notion of propriety, she will not scruple to point it out, and loudly too!”

Kitty was inclined to believe her, and Lydia not; fortunately, when they called on the Fitzwilliams the next day, Lady Catherine was present, annoyed, and more than willing to lecture Lydia at extreme length for the unbridled temerity of not knowing French.

Elizabeth was grateful to Lady Catherine for perhaps the first time. Mrs. Bennet and her three youngest were terrified into silence before her.

This would hold, Elizabeth thought, until she and Colonel Fitzwilliam left for Portugal. It was then to be hoped that Jane and Bingley would be married and all collateral damage of their improprieties avoided. But, in the unlikely event this did not happen, Elizabeth made a point of talking with each of her younger sisters again, impressing upon them that this was Lady Catherine in a good mood. Lady Catherine in a bad was beyond all power of description.

“You are marrying high above your station, my dear Lizzy,” whispered Mrs. Bennet, overhearing some of Elizabeth’s strictures. “What a gracious woman, to take such notice of all your sisters!”

“Isn't she,” said Elizabeth, and replied with this, “Oh?” and “Indeed,” to all her mother’s other observations. As amusing as her father found this rather overwhelming blend of families, Elizabeth was beginning to tire of being so constantly on tenderhooks. As soon as it grew too dark to shop, and she was therefore released from her mother’s control, Elizabeth finished her letter to Charlotte and ventured the first of the ones that an engagement allowed:

_Dear Col. Fitzwilliam,_

_I have fallen hopelessly into extravagance. I turned over my yards of spangled muslin to a mantua maker, and have been promised my gown by Thursday evening, in exchange for a truly appalling sum. You are a terrible influence!_

_But, as I should rather fall into your bad habits than continue on in my own (intransigence and willfulness, chiefly), and admit my fault. If you have procured a license, and will settle with my father tomorrow, I think we may be married on Friday—if you can settle my mother's worries that we cannot fit all your family into the Gardiner’s parlor, and mine, that we will be forced to honeymoon surrounded by everyone who takes such an eager interest in our wrists._

_Yrs,_

_Elizabeth Bennet_

A footman came almost immediately with a reply:

_Dear Miss Bennet,_

_I cannot tell you with what pleasure I opened your note, nor how my pleasure increased upon reading it. You may be easy on all accounts: I procured a license immediately after visiting my regiment; my father and his lawyer have been wild to meet with your your father and his lawyer since they learnt of your existence; Lady Catherine has insisted— without consulting Marjorie, or my father, of course— that we shall host the breakfast; and as all my family is in London, we should have total privacy at my father’s seat in Hampshire. I am, as ever—_

_Yr obt. servant,_

_Richard Fitzwilliam._

Only the lateness of the hour kept her from writing back— that, and her mother’s raptures on the nearness of the ceremony, and her laments on the impossibility of procuring entirely new gowns for her other daughters.

 

***

 

Wednesday brought with it the tedium of lawyers, and the the actual price point an Earl would place upon a younger son and his heirs male and female. Elizabeth was not staggered, but was surprised at the sum the Earl proposed to give them and any hypothetical children, and was for some time inclined to demand to know how great the sum would be had she been a _Mr._ Bennet of Longbourne. Of course, it was precisely because she was _not_ a Mr. Bennet that the Earl was so generous; and Elizabeth was flustered and a little offended that anyone could think she must be bribed into marrying Colonel Fitzwilliam. She comforted herself by thinking the Earl’s manner to her father, which blended anxiety to please with real and undisguised worry at his pauses, proof that she was not the one being bribed; her father was.

Mr. Bennet arrived at this conclusion as well and seemed vastly amused by it. No one had ever attempted to bribe him before, and he seemed to think it hilarious that it should be over a true match, where both actual participants had been begging his permission for nearly a week.

The discussion of various bonds and Funds and the ‘Change that resulted from Mr. Bennet’s studied pauses and looks of put-upon concern were so incomprehensible Elizabeth soon lost the will to take a moral stand. She wearily accepted what was put before her, and managed to rouse herself enough to tease Colonel Fitzwilliam for ever thinking he was impoverished.

“Ten thousand pounds per annum is rather the average in our family,” said the Earl, overhearing her. Elizabeth was not terribly surprised, as she had just that day learnt that the Earl of Matlock had a clean sixty thousand pounds per annum from his rents alone. “I know the Army does not pay its officers well; this shall keep you and Fitzwilliam at a respectable income. I am not unreasonable, however; I am more than willing to raise it to nine or ten after your first child.”

Elizabeth and Mr. Bennet exchanged glances at this. It had never occurred to Elizabeth that her in-laws would still doubt the nature of Colonel Fitzwilliam’s regard for her; she had edged on impropriety partly in the hopes of forcing Colonel Fitzwilliam's family to treat him a little more normally. There was clearly no hope of this, but Colonel Fitzwilliam did not appear to expect anything else, or to be surprised at this demand for proof he could, in fact, like women as much as men.

“I cannot fault arrangements that require nothing from me,” said Mr. Bennet. “I shall sign— and, Lizzy, give you a gift beyond price: I shall not tell your mother how much pin money you shall have until after you are gone to Portugal.”

Thursday brought with it the torment of hearing her mother’s advice for the marriage bed, and was somewhat ameliorated by then getting much better advice from her aunt. Elizabeth was not surprised by the report of either lady; she had lived too long in the country, and too near farms full of breeding animals to be unfamiliar with the mechanics of the act. Nor had she any particular fears, for Colonel Fitzwilliam had always shewn himself to be very attentive to her, and gentle in those attentions.

“A great deal depends upon a lady’s choice,” Mrs. Gardiner has concluded. “I think you chose wisely, Lizzy.”

“I am glad to hear it, for my judgment was recently cast into doubt, and I am eager for any proofs to the contrary.”

“I was as giddy as you before I married your uncle, so I know how difficult it is for you to sit here, but I cannot yet release you. Might I give you just a little more advice?”

“Only a very little! I am overfull of it today, and it will soon all spill out.”

“Love is, in my experience, a choice. It is one you must make every day. You have chosen to be with a person; you must continue to choose them every day you are married.”

“Do you mean to scare me off with all this talk of work?”

“No, merely to remind you of what marriage is, at its heart: a publically acknowledged choice between two persons. I have heard your father say we overemphasize this choice over all others, but as it is the choice that now defines a woman’s life, I do not feel uneasy in emphasizing to you that this is a choice so important you will make it again and again in various little ways, until one of you dies.”

“How grimly you conclude!”

“With his profession, it is a real possibility. And you are following the drum; that is not without its own risks. You seem very in love, which will make it easier, but there will be times where you are so angry or so tired or so frightened that you will not feel it. You must make a real effort to understand his perspective if you wish to regain the feeling.”

“I wish you had given me an easier task,” said Elizabeth, feeling vaguely guilty about her previously poor opinion of Mr. Darcy. “I am rather proud of my own perspective; a great deal of work went into shaping it. It is difficult to cast aside. But I shall faithfully write your advice in the table of my heart.”

“I am glad to hear it, Lizzy. Remember, you are the ones to really decide whether or not you are a match.”

 

***

 

Elizabeth later regretted that she had not taken more time on her wedding day to ignore her relations; she felt bombarded by her mother and sisters from dawn— when she awoke to the morning call of Mary practicing scales, so she might later play during the wedding breakfast— to dressing— where everyone but Jane burst in to distract the maid assisting her— to the ceremony— where her mother sobbed loudly and without cease— to leaving the church, where Kitty and Lydia were so wild with delight at the honor guard of soldiers standing outside with sabres drawn they nearly forgot to be frightened of Lady Catherine.

Elizabeth even spent the wedding breakfast managing all her relations, new and old, but she ruefully contented herself with the thought that there had been at one moment untouched with embarrassment, or the fear of it. Alas, it was not first seeing Colonel Fitzwilliam, waiting at the altar with military uprightness, the gold braid of his uniform catching the light, for Anne DeBourgh had sneezed, and this caused (or rather Lady Catherine’s loud concerns over it had caused) Elizabeth to look away before Colonel Fitzwilliam had noticed her arrival and turned to see her. Nor could it be the baring of their left wrists before the minister, for both families contained members silly enough to rise creaking from the pews to try and see the marks of the bride and the groom in what was technically a private moment, or the exchanging of vows, because Mrs. Bennet’s sniffs punctuated each phrase.

It was when the ceremony was done and the ring was upon her finger, they stepped into the vestry attended only by the thankfully taciturn pastor, with Jane and Darcy as witnesses. Colonel Fitzwilliam wrote first, then, offering her the pen, said, “Well, my dear Miss Bennet, I think this is the last time you sign yourself so. I suppose I ought to start calling you Lizzy.”

“I shall equally rejoice in being called Mrs. Fitzwilliam,” replied she. She let her hand linger on his, as she took the pen.

Elizabeth hadn't noticed before how Colonel Fitzwilliam’s smile started in his eyes before traversing the rest of his face, and gave herself a moment to take in happily this detail before bending to sign ‘Elizabeth Bennet’ for the last time. Colonel Fitzwilliam lightly rested his hand on the small of her back as she did so; she could have sworn she felt the heat of his touch through all the layers of gown, petticoat, stays and shift.

When she put down the pen and straightened, he did not move his hand; instead she stepped into the curve of his arm and the vague sadness she felt in putting off “Elizabeth Bennet,” a version of herself with which she had ultimately been contented, dissolved like sugar in tea.

Darcy had signed the register with enough grim solemnity to convince any onlooker that he was either signing against his better judgement, or suffering from a severe toothache. Elizabeth knew now this was just his usual expression when large numbers of people were staring at him. Jane, crying silently and beautifully, signed her name with a pretty flourish. The minister added his own, “Dr. Grant,” quickly and wordlessly.

Colonel Fitzwilliam smiled down at her softly and Elizabeth thought ‘I am sure I shall like being Elizabeth Fitzwilliam equally as much.’

So little a thing, Elizabeth marveled, as she pretended to like wedding cake, and kept Lydia from flirting with the regiment's recruiting officer. Several pieces of paper, some words in a certain space, and a ring— and now she was someone else entirely.

“Well Lizzy,” said her father, as people began to depart, “I hope you know I shall come visit you in London every time you are here, if only in hopes of once again seeing Lady Catherine.”

She felt equally close to laughter and tears and chose to laugh. “I thought nothing would make you come voluntarily to London!”

Mr. Bennet put his arm about her shoulders and kissed the top of her head. “You would, Lizzy. Write to me often. You never know what letter I shall answer.”

She very nearly cried; it was only seeing Lydia and Kitty both descend on Georgianna Darcy that kept her from doing so. “Of course I will— and you know, we shall be in London a little while yet. Excuse me— I must go rescue my husband’s ward from my sisters.”

But this done, she realized everyone was beginning to leave; Colonel Fitzwilliam appeared by her elbow and, handing her a cup of tea she had not realized she desperately wanted, said, “I do not think you actually ate or drank anything today.”

“There has been too much to do,” she lamented, exaggerating her distress. “And now we must to the very ends of Hampshire. That is... what, eight, ten hours?”

“More than that, if the roads are bad— which is why we shall leave in the morning. But you need not put yourself out about any of the arrangements; I checked upstairs just now and your trunks are all here, and a fire lit in the room. The chief parlormaid agreed to do for you this evening, and tomorrow morning, by the by.”

“You have been upstairs already?” Elizabeth glanced over the rim of her teacup at him.

He tried to look innocent, but ended up laughing and said, “I like to think I am a patient fellow, but Lizzy— there is only so much a man can bear when he is newly married— and married to _you_ in particular.”

She blushed, and, busying herself with now empty cup and saucer, said, “You do not think you might do for me this evening?”

“I did not like to presume, but I should very much like to try.”

It did not surprise Elizabeth at all that he did very well indeed.


	7. In which Mrs. Fitzwilliam's military career is gone over

The two weeks they spent in Hampshire ended, in Elizabeth’s opinion, far too soon.

“Some conspiracy of clockmakers?” asked Colonel Fitzwilliam, as they strolled along the part of the beach considered the Matlock estate.

Elizabeth turned over a shell with the tip of her parasol, wondering if she ought to send it to Mary, in the hopes that natural philosophy might be interesting enough to replace theology in the curio cabinet that was Mary’s head. “Oh certainly. A cabal with the calendar-makers.”

“Crimes with the chronometers?”

“A crisis of... the... oh blast.”

Colonel Fitzwilliam laughed. “Crisis for Chronos, perhaps? I shall give that one to you.”

“Very generous!”

“What is mine is yours, according to the book of Common Prayer and the Hardwicke Act of 1754,” he replied, kissing her cheek. “But I am afraid we must go back to London— I have to reassure a collection of bureaucrats that my arms are still attached, and, as soon as that is accomplished, I am very certain it is thence on to Spithead, and from there, Lisbon. We shall have some time to outfit you, though there is one part of your kit that must be gotten here.”

Elizabeth mistrusted this, and groaned dramatically when he lead her to the stables. “Oh Richard, _must_ you make me ride through Portugal?”

“Yes,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam, cheerfully. “Spain too. Come now Lizzy, you shall like this horse. His name is Lord Orville."

"I deeply regret ever telling you my favorite book is  _Evelina._ "

"This gelding is as gallant as his namesake, and behaves with just as much propriety.”

Elizabeth tried to think of the best way to protest this expense of this; their first married argument had been over the cost of handsome diamond set Colonel Fitzwilliam had given her as a bridal gift the morning after their marriage. It had not been much of an argument— she had protested, teasingly enough to keep the sting out of it, that she had brought so little to the marriage she felt awkward about having something so expensive after the generous marriage settlement, and he had pointed out that if this was the case she would need a diamond set— and as it really was beautiful, Elizabeth ceded the moral high ground with less reluctance than she felt she ought to feel.

“I know that look, Lizzy, but I really think I have behaved with great frugality. Lord Orville was the intermediate horse between pony and hunter for my youngest sister, and is now the mount offered to any young lady who did not bring her own. I have been given permission to take him and any bridle and sidesaddle in the stables. He shall cost only his feed.”

For a horse, Elizabeth liked Lord Orville well enough. He was phlegmatic bay gelding uninterested in doing much more than walking very sedately after the horse in front of him, or being curried. “He seems docile.”

“He is a comfortably middle-aged fellow, well beyond the frights and passions of youth.”

“He is not easily spooked?”

“He is a horse; of course he is easily spooked.”

“You are not making me feel better, Richard.”

“Here’s something that will: Lady Catherine and Anne have gone back to Kent, your parents and sisters to Hertfordshire, and the Darcys to Derbyshire. Only my siblings will be in London.”

This did make her feel much better.

 

***

 

In all, they spent a further week in London, before the order came for Colonel Fitzwilliam to gather up all the junior officers who had finished training their companies, and all the companies themselves, and march the four to five days to Spithead. Elizabeth, outfitted at more expense than she thought proper (she could tell already that though she and the colonel would rarely quarrel, when they did, it would always be about money), found herself the object of considerable fascination to the men officially under her husband’s command... and the women who traveled unofficially with them. Several of the captains were married, and brought with them their wives and children, as did the more trusted NCOs. The wife of Colonel Fitzwilliam’s batman even asked to wait upon her, and, being a hairdresser’s daughter, proved more skilled than any of Longbourn’s parlormaids.

“Really,” said Elizabeth, as they went down to dinner with the other officers before embarking, “I have never been so well attended! I seem to be someone of considerable importance now.”

“You are, my dear. I cannot offer you much—” Elizabeth snorted at that “—but I can at least offer you the highest status of any woman within the regiment.”

“Oh Lord, am I a leader of fashion?”

“If you chuse to be, I daresay you are. You are already greatly popular in the mess— officers and ladies alike.”

“There are more ladies than I expected.”

Colonel Fitzwilliam looked faintly embarrassed. “Technically there are only six wives per regiment allowed, but the actual number depends a great deal on the leniency of the commanding officer—”

Elizabeth burst out laughing. “Oh Richard! Sybil warned me you gave in too easily.”

It seemed Colonel Fitzwilliam had always been a soft touch when his officers applied to him for permission to marry, or to bring their wives and children with them. His own marriage had only strengthened that impulse, which made Elizabeth popular with these ladies before she joined them. And, as Elizabeth proposed mostly to ride, and therefore not to take a space in the wagons, and, moreover, to hold balls when their quarters allowed for it, she was welcomed with alacrity.

She had not much in common with these ladies, except her circumstances; however, half of them were from outside of England and discussion of their travels and home cultures made conversation easy. On the voyage to Lisbon, she had the great fortune of falling into company with Mrs. Beatrice Kirke. Her husband was the colonel of the — Foot, which, for reasons still unclear to Elizabeth, was more frequently sent into battle with Colonel Fitzwilliam’s troops than any other; Colonel Fitzwilliam had therefore undertaken to convey this lady to her husband’s posting.

Mrs. Kirke had followed the drum in some way or other since she was born under a gun carriage in Jamaica, to a captain of artillery and a local heiress of that country, and was the same age as Charlotte Collins. This difference in age and experience made Mrs. Kirke seem at first slightly intimidating, for she had a native’s understanding of the culture into which Elizabeth had been transplanted, but this soon passed. She was kind as Elizabeth, normally an excellent and graceful walker, careened over the ship’s deck, unable to in any way correct for ground that would tilt in opposite directions every few seconds; and winked when, at dinner, Elizabeth forgot she must hold her plate in place, and accidentally sent it zooming down the table.

“You shall get used to it, Mrs. Fitzwilliam,” said Mrs. Kirke, catching the plate, and passing it back at the next roll of the ship on the waves. “Fortunately it is only a week’s sailing from Spithead to Lisbon.”

“Have you made the journey many times?”

“Oh aye, twice a year since the French first invaded Spain,” said she, cheerfully serving herself more of the savory. “Three times this year; my sister in Portsmouth had her first child and I was determined to annoy her through her confinement.”

Elizabeth, who could not manage anything more than hardtack and Madeira, managed a weak smile. “I suppose you must be a very good sailor now.”

“And an excellent campaigner,” agreed Mrs. Kirke, smiling. “Stick with me, Mrs. Fitz, I’ll show you the lay of the land!”

She did, with a great deal of good humor. Elizabeth was glad to have something to occupy her, other than a mild but persistent seasickness, and thought herself rather a good student. Thanks to Mrs. Kirke, she knew to put cotton wadding in her ears when the ship’s canons were at practice; learnt how to reload an officer’s pistol without dropping the ball or setting herself on fire; managed to saddle her own horse; and stepped off the gangplank to Lisbon on shaky legs, but on her own power.

“There, Mrs. Fitz,” said Mrs. Kirke. “Nicely done! Luckily you married into the army, not the Navy; you shall be on land the rest of the time, less we sail on the Burno.”

“Is that a possibility?” asked Elizabeth, feeling already faintly ill at the prospect.

Mrs. Kirke laughed. “Possibly; it depends on how far we must go. But my husband’s regiment, and yours, tends not to be sent to the front; we secure what has been held, or we lay seige.”

“Why is that?”

“It is partly because no commanding officer wants to explain to the Earl of Matlock why his son was killed in action, and partly because Colonel Fitzwilliam and Colonel Kirke do not, like some officers I shall not name, insist upon the glory of constant action. But they both have the patience and the right temperament for it! They insisted all their officers carry Spanish phrasebooks with them, which has helped a treat with provisions— another reason they are best left at the back, securing the supply lines. You are as safe as you can be, while on the Peninsula.”

Elizabeth wrote as much to her father, and to her mother and sisters, before realizing how long at her pen she would be if she wrote to each one of them, every time she was safely arrived somewhere or other.

“Richard?” she called across their billeted room.

“Yes, my dear?” asked he, from the large central table, over which he had spread a large quantity of maps, letters, and other bits of ephemera.

“How often do you write to your relations?”

“Not as often as Lady Catherine thinks I should.”

Elizabeth laughed. “Your sisters I mean.”

“Ah. In that I am aided by distance. I write to each of them once a month, and of the London contingent, write to all three in rotation. Darcy is the only one I write to every week. If you can keep yourself to only a few letters, I will have no difficulty adding them to the dispatch packet.”

“Even if I write to Jane and my father both?”

“Even if you write them daily.” He held up a letter, frowned at it, and considered once again the map before him.

Too curious to keep to the window seat where she had balanced her writing desk of her knees, Elizabeth came forward to rest her arms on the back of Colonel Fitzwilliam’s chair, and her chin in the top of his head. She scanned the map. “Have we a difficult march before us?”

“No,” said he, glancing up at her and smiling. “We shall get you used to marching well before adding the additional complication of enemy attack. And I am glad you have found a friend already in Mrs. Kirke; I was worried you might be lonely.”

“I miss Jane, but we have been apart before,” said Elizabeth. ‘But never for so long a stretch,’ she thought, but did not say aloud. “Before you return to the threat of Napoleon, I am afraid I must ask you about a threat left back in England— I warned my father about Mr. Wickham but he was not inclined to take me seriously. And I had not the time in the past month to try again and make him hear me.”

“My fault there,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam. “You said Mr. Wickham was an ensign in the —shire milita, did you not?”

“Yes?”

“What is the name of the colonel of the regiment?”

“Forster.”

“I can write to him, if you like. A warning, colonel to colonel, ought to limit what damage Mr. Wickham can do. Did you warn your sisters?”

“I warned Jane.”

Colonel Fitzwilliam considered this. “Jane strikes me as a sensible sort of woman; I have no doubt she will manage to limit the effect Mr. Wickham can have on your sisters. She will not fail you.” He reached up to pull affectionately on one of her curls. “I am sorry Lizzy. I know it is my fault you cannot keep an eye on them.”

“I could as easily blame myself,” she replied. “You did not fling me unconscious onto a boat headed to Lisbon.”

“A ship,” he corrected her, not for the first time. “Or a frigate. But will you advise me on what this Colonel Forster will take seriously as a warning? I do not like to make public Georgiana’s near scrape.”

Elizabeth considered this. “Are you at liberty to air his petitioning Darcy for the living?”

“I am not sure Darcy would like the whole to be common knowledge.” Colonel Fitzwilliam considered this a moment and reached for pen, paper, and ink pot. “I can speak to his time at university, and to his conduct towards Miss Crawford. I hope that will be enough. Let me write the salutation, then let me know how I should convey the rest.” He said aloud, as he wrote, “Dear Colonel Forster, I write to you in some concern about an ensign my wife, the former Miss Elizabeth Bennet of Longbourn, tells me has bought a commission in your ranks. It seemed to only right and proper to dash off a note to you about your recruit, as I hope you would do for me, should you have knowledge about a gentleman proposing to purchase a commission in my own battalion.”

Elizabeth had been taking a slow, thoughtful turn about the room and said, “Mr. Wickham has but the appearance of goodness; he was sent down from university for interfering with the maidservants, and lately tried to fix his interest with a friend of my sister-in-law’s, in so ungentlemanly a manner he distressed the lady—” Elizabeth could not help a smile; she could not imagine Miss Crawford distressed by anything “—considerably.”

“I shall allow the exaggeration, since it is amusing. Continue.”

“Had she been less guarded, I do not doubt his behavior would have thoroughly outraged propriety. It would behoove you to keep a wary eye on this gentleman, should you wish the reputation of your officers to remain unbesmirched.”

“Very good— I have the honor to be your obedient servant, the Honorable Colonel Richard Fitzwilliam, —th Foot, Lisbon, Portugal. Would you be so kind as to write the direction?”

Elizabeth did, and had the later felicity of seeing a letter addressed to her husband, sent from Meryton. Weary and saddlesore as she was, she scooped this letter from the pile Colonel Fitzwilliam’s aide-de-campe had dumped onto a camp table and passed it up to her husband, still ahorse. “Here, Richard, this will cheer you!”

It did not.

He read the letter frowningly, his horse restive beneath him.

“What does he write?”

“Nothing that fills me with confidence,” said he, tossing the letter to her, before dismounting. “Tell me what you think. I cannot like it.”

_To the honorable Colonel Fitzwilliam,_

_My dear sir, what a signal honor to receive a letter from you, and allow me to present my heartiest congratulations and best wishes for your conjugal felicity. If you are half so happy with Mrs. Fitzwilliam as I am with Mrs. Forster, it is bliss indeed. Let me assure you that it is better to take an indulgent line with ladies, as you have done, and may this letter assure her that you have done as bid. Mr. Wickham’s youthful indiscretions do not greatly concern me— ladies always make men out to be rakes if they so much as smile at a parlormaid, and boys, you know, will be boys— and I think you may assure your wife that the rigors of service will knock any silliness out of Mr. Wickham. It may perhaps assure her more to know that the regiment shall be summering in Brighton and away from her charming young sisters. I have the honor to be_

_Yr obt servant,_

_Colonel John Forster_

_“_ I cannot believe he so misinterpreted your letter,” cried Elizabeth, pulling down the flap of the tent, so they could speak in private.

“Rigors of service,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam, disgusted, lighting the lamp. “Oh yes, very rigorous! Summering in Brighton. As if walking the beach in front of the Prince Regent’s pavilion is as difficult as marching through the Portuguese mountains to Salamanca! How they must suffer! What deprivations they must endure! I daresay they occasionally get their boots a little wet. Medals should be awarded and songs written about their noble sacrifices for king and country.”

“I greatly appreciated being told you were an indulgent husband,” said Elizabeth, “for condescending to pat me on the head when I am silly and frightened of boys being boys.”

“I cannot think his marriage very happy.”

“Oh happy, I am sure, but not in the least sensible. His wife of.. let me think, six months? Is but sixteen years old. The same age as Lydia, in fact. _He_ is fifty, or thereabouts.”

Colonel Fitzwilliam grimaced. “I hate to have anyone think our marriage is in any way similar.”

“At the respective ages of twenty-one and twenty-nine—"

"Thirty next month."

"Still, I do not think we are in in any way comparable. I signed my statement denying all impediments to our marriage with a perfectly clear conscience. The only doubt I had was if impediment ought to be capitalized.”

He cracked a smile at this, and, after removing his sword, sank with a sigh into his camp chair. “Good God. The Army bias against the militias is not without foundation. We often say if a man is not gentleman enough for the army, he goes into the militia. I cannot believe Colonel Forster so stupid.”

“Really? I can, and very well.”

“Was there some incident in Meryton that caused you to think so?”

Elizabeth pulled out her hat pin and took off her hat. “No; I speak in generalities, not particulars. You are a man; you do not know how much men devalue the feelings of women.” She laughed suddenly. “Did you know— though I do not know why you would, because I never told you— that I first loved you when you told me my anger at your cousin was justified?”

“Really?” He unhooked his gorget and dropped it on top of his traveling writing desk with a groan. “What advice can that provide to our future children? ‘Son, always be honest about the stupidity of your relations. Your mother first loved me because I agreed your Uncle Darcy was being an idiot.’ Can you not pick some more gallant action of mine?”

“Shan’t,” said Elizabeth, through a mouthful of hairpins. “It will keep you honest.”

“Oh Lizzy, please?”

She was occupied in hunting through her saddlebags for her hairbrush and hummed her disagreement.

“Do not make me beg, Mrs. Fitzwilliam.”

She pointed her hairbrush at him until she could remove the hairpins from her mouth with her free hand. “I shall tell you what I will tell any daughter, ‘My dear, I knew I loved your father when he respected my feelings instead of dismissing them. Never marry a man who does not do so.’”

Colonel Fitzwilliam extended a hand to her; Elizabeth, her spirits rising, cheekily deposited her hairbrush in it. He laughed. “Putting me to work after so long a ride today? You are a harsh taskmaster.

“Yes, for Mrs. Pattinson is attending Mrs. Kirke, who is washing her hair. It is apparently a very long and involved process.” She dragged over another camp chair and laughed at Colonel Fitzwilliam’s clumsy attempts at wielding a hairbrush. When he had last got some notion of what to do, she asked, “I suppose nothing more can be done about Mr. Wickham?”

“I am at a loss as to what else might be,” he admitted. “I suppose I can write to Darcy that I was not successful in warning Colonel Forster, and you could write Jane, but Wickham is momentarily beyond our immediate control. And we have more pressing business. We’ve a quicker march than anticipated. We must meet up with the rest of the brigade before July in order to support an attack.”

“Oh what fun,” said Elizabeth, glumly.

Colonel Fitzwilliam tugged lightly on a lock of her hair. “You are almost a proficient horsewoman now, Mrs. Fitzwilliam; do not look so dismayed. And, you know, our division is to be posted on the ridge above Salamanca. You shall have a very good view of what the brigadier-general has assured me shall be a pivotal battle of the whole campaign. I daresay your father will answer _that_ letter.”

 

***

 

Elizabeth had not known, or rather, had read about how large armies were, but had failed to conceptualize so vast a number. She had written a dull letter to Mary about how her husband’s regiment of nearly six hundred men and officers was but one of five other regiments, in the second of three brigades making up the 7th Infantry Division, but the vast scope of it was something beyond understanding.

“It’s far different from the city,” said Mrs. Kirke, as they approached the camp of the 7th Division. “There people can be tucked away. Not so much here. But then again, our notion of war is still lining men up in neat formations and moving them at each other. There’s a fine geometry to it all.”

“What do you do during a battle?” asked Elizabeth, carefully reining in her horse, so that she could observe the maneuvers on the plane before her.

“Observe. Sometimes while cutting and rolling bandages, and making sticking plasters. Do you know your regimental surgeon yet?”

“No, should I?”

Mrs. Kirke smiled at her. “Only if you don’t wish to fret yourself to death during an action you cannot observe. I shall give a dinner for you and Colonel Fitzwilliam as thanks for getting me safe through Portugal. I don’t see why I shouldn’t invite your surgeon; he and our regimental surgeon are friends, and our regimental surgeon has two daughters. We shall be an even number at table.”

The regimental surgeon turned out to be no less a person than Mrs. Kirke’s brother, one Colonel Robinson, which explained the unusual level of favor he found with his regimental officer, and the role he not just allowed but allotted to Mrs. Kirke. His daughters were more good-humored than clever, and had only an indomitable spirit in common with their aunt, but Elizabeth tried to make herself agreeable, and they responded in kind.

Colonel Fitzwilliam’s regimental surgeon, Colonel Dunne, was a cheerful eccentric, who scrupled not to say that he could easily find some stillroom tasks if Mrs. Fitzwilliam feared idleness, and that he had often envied Colonel Robinson all his usual helpers. With Jane running the household, the stillroom at Longborn had been Elizabeth's domain. She had never much minded this, since it gave her excuses to be out of doors collecting flowers and barks, but had never before felt glad of her allotted chores.

She was successful in convincing some of the foreign-born ladies to assist, but less so with the English women. They had found allies amongst the more fashionable First Battalion of the 7th Division and now felt at liberty to murmur over their tea cups that they found it odd she must so often be _doing_ and, further, how very strange it was that the soulmate of an earl’s son should never have danced at Almack’s or visited St. James’s court. Despite her attempts to bring the conversation back to the realities of the Spanish campaign, they kept on their theme. What, she had never been to the opera? They had heard she was fond of music. She had never attended a party of the Prince Regent’s at Brighton, or a picnic al fresco in Richmond? But they heard she loved nature!

Elizabeth kept her temper as best she could, but, having been shewn some measure of deference from them before arriving in Portugal, she found their cattiness provoking in the extreme. Never before had she entered into Mr. Darcy’s feelings about her rudeness at Huntsford.

‘Good God,’ thought she, as she set down her teacup, ‘who would have thought I'd have the same feelings as Mr. Darcy?’

But it seemed to her good to borrow some of the tactics adopted from her in-laws. Mr.Darcy’s cold stares would not do; but some of Marjorie's false innocence might.

“I am sorry to hear you miss London so very much indeed,” said Elizabeth, wide-eyed. “Perhaps I should mention it to my husband? I am sure space could be made for you on the wagon that will convey back the men injured enough for medical leave.”

They saw their error; Elizabeth put her hand on the forearm of the ringleader and continued on, in the same tone of sympathetic (and synthetic) sweetness, “No, no, you must allow me to get you back to London. It is my fault you are presently here, instead of in England. My husband told me that only six ladies were technically allowed to follow each regiment, and I so protested at the unfairness of this he at last admitted it was a rule he would have no problem bending. But I consulted only my own feelings in this matter, and thought, ‘I should so hate to be apart from my soulmate; all ladies must feel as I do.’ But I see I spoke in error—”

The ladies were hasty in their refusals.

Elizabeth had retreated away from a show of temper by the time Colonel Fitzwilliam’s aide-de-campe found her in order to deliver her mail, but was very soon provoked again. She had received a laconic letter from her father complaining that all his daughters seemed to wish to leave him. Now she was gone off to Spain, Jane traveled in the Lake Country with the Gardiners, and Lydia was invited to Brighton by Mrs. Forster.

“Richard, my father writes that Colonel Forester’s wife wishes to take my silliest sister as her companion,” said Elizabeth, dashing at once into their tent. “Her particular friend, rather. I am dismayed to find such a post exists.”

“I daresay it does, in the militia,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam, smiling at her in his shaving mirror. “They are ramshackle enough for it, giving billets to civilians. I suppose one might even find such behavior in the regulars, depending on the judgment of the colonel of the regiment.”

“Just to think,” she lamented, “had you been a sillier man, I could have had Mrs. Collins with me.”

“In an active war zone?”

“Would you not prefer that to Mr. Collins on one side and Lady Catherine on the other?”

“That is so good a point I cannot refute it. I shall fudge the orders at once, and demand Mrs. Collins come to Spain. I hope she enjoys _very_ long walks— in fact, marches.”

“I am not serious,” said she, laughing, “I wished only to be sure this new scheme of Lydia’s was as ridiculous as it seemed.”

He returned his attention to razor and mirror. “It is less ridiculous for it being the militia. By definition they do not leave England's shores. There is no question of scarcity of supply or quarters, or any real danger.”

“You do not think the French will really reach England?”

“Consider these two points, my dear: one, the only time the French got close to reaching Ireland's shores— not even ours— in was in the ‘90s, and the French managed to get lost in a fog and overshoot their target by several hundred miles. Two, with Spain in open rebellion and the Russians burning their cities rather than giving them up, the French cannot look far past the continent. I think it in the highest degree unlikely any militia will see active duty. But still, your youngest sister is just sixteen, is she not?”

“Yes, she got her soul mark only this past January.”

Colonel Fitzwilliam toweled off his face. “I know your influence is limited, but I would not advise your parents not to let her go.” He paused and said, after a minute, “I still regret letting Georgiana go to Ramsgate with insufficient chaperonage. Her spirits are still so affected. She was never _lively_ before, but now....”

“I think,” said Elizabeth, considering the idea, “there could be no harm in my writing that you had cause to write to Colonel Forster on military business and found him wanting.”

“You may quote me in saying I find his judgement suspect.”

“Thank you, I shall. Their departure is in three weeks; my letter shall return in one. If my father responds, which I think is unlikely, I shall not reach him again before Lydia is off in Brighton.” Elizabeth mulled over this idea. “I shall have to remind Jane of the cost of Lydia’s bad behavior. I hate to do it, but Jane can be firm when she is convinced she is in the right.”

“I think that wise; one must never go to battle without reinforcement.”

The letters to her father and Jane were speedily dispatched. To Mary she appealed for wisdom on the folly of pleasure jaunts, to Kitty she hinted at the unfairness of such a scheme, to her aunt Gardiner she complained of the impropriety of Colonel Forster’s response. This seemed not quite enough of a force against Lydia’s obstinacy, so Elizabeth spent an entire morning crafting a very careful letter to her mother, a letter she considered a masterstroke in having proximity on a page supply links that otherwise did not exist:

_Dear Mama,_

_I was alarmed to hear talk of Lydia going to Brighton with Mrs. Forster. A regiment in summer campaign is a very different affair from a winter quartering, as I can now well attest. There are times when_ I _feel unequal to its rigors; I cannot think Lydia, who is but sixteen, and has never had my enthusiasm for long walks, can manage._

_I have had a letter from Col. Fitzwilliam’s ward, Miss Darcy, who writes that she and her brother mean to summer with the Bingleys._

_Col. Fitzwilliam thinks we cannot leave Spain until November, at the earliest. I do not really regret anything but the idea Jane could be married before I return. She would feel it exceedingly if even one of her sisters were absent; two would probably send her into a steep decline._

She added some trivial gossip of the camp, that she and Lady Greville, whose husband mismanaged the First Brigade, were once again at odds; that she and Mrs. Kirke had by now a surfeit of medieval ruins; that Colonel Fotheringay’s wife Saanvi was expecting, and closed with her love, and a hint that when she was in England, and once more had access to her pin money, she might do something for Mary and Lydia.

 

***

 

After the initial period of adjustment, Elizabeth found herself wildly happy on the march, in the company of the (foreign-born) ladies of the division, in the scrambling parties up the mountains, and in the dusty explorations of what medieval buildings and sites survived the wars. Salamanca she had passed on a hill by the medical tent inattentively rolling bandages with some of the other officers’ wives, and getting up frequently to observe the battle below. Even with her rudimentary understanding of military tactics she had been impressed with Wellington's command. Colonel Dunne also, under the pressure of so hot an action, had allowed her to treat some of the lesser wounds of the soldiers, that required no unseemly baring of limbs before a lady, and could be fixed with bandages or sticking plasters. The assistant surgeons were not very pleased by this, as it struck dangerously close to the new French method of _triage,_ and they held any French medical technique to be unpatriotic in the extreme. They had always treated men as they came, no matter the severity of the injury. Why should they follow the French method of sorting out men based on whose injuries were worse? But they could not very well go against the wishes of two colonels and a colonel’s wife; they grumbled but gave in.

The siege of Burgos Elizabeth found tedious, but less so than being snowed in at Longbourne. She picked up the habit of writing long, witty letters to everyone she knew, Colonel Fitzwilliam’s relations included.

To Elizabeth's surprise, Georgiana sent letters about as often as Jane. Georgiana’s letters were careful and full of stock phrases from letter writing manuals. When these failed her, she relied on, “my brother says,” or “my brother thinks” to fill up the page. Elizabeth often joked that, by extension, Mr. Darcy was her most faithful correspondent.

Lydia sent a letter every day for two weeks when she was denied her trip to Brighton, until Elizabeth, exasperated, wrote back that in two or three years time, she would sponsor Lydia to China, in order to find her soulmate. This caused more trouble than it was worth. Kitty and Mary both wrote to complain, her mother wrote to ask why she could not send Lydia immediately, and was so much a stranger to logic she could not understand why her suggestions on how to arrange and finance this were physically impossible. This drove Elizabeth to give up on writing as frequently, and to instead brave the rain and mud to visit the small villages around Burgos to purchase enough Spanish lace to send to all her female relations, in lieu of letters. Mrs. Kirke was of an equally active disposition and was her frequent accomplice on these expeditions. Elizabeth was somewhat surprised at how heartily both colonels supported their endeavors until she realized just how frightened the populace— particularly the women— were of having so many soldiers so close at hand. The visits of two colonel’s wives with awkward Spanish did a certain amount of good; their interest in and purchase of the handiwork of the village women significantly more. It was a pity, Mrs. Kirke often said, that everyone’s pay was four months in arrears. They would have bought the goodwill of every parish around Burgos if they had the coin for it.

When they were not entertaining themselves, there were the modified society entertainments put on wherever two or more English ladies and gentlemen were gathered together: dinners, balls, and card parties. The locations, be they tents or local homes commandeered by the British Army as billets, perhaps provided a more picaresque setting, but Elizabeth was amused to see how little they varied from the entertainments of Hertfordshire. Lady Grenville even supplied all the smiling malice of Miss Bingley. Elizabeth took great pleasure in despising her, and phrasing insults so prettily, this lady often accepted them as compliments.

To call the dinners “dinners,” however, was to be generous to the point of falsehood. Neither Spain nor Portugal could give itself over to farming while being so frequent a battlefield; there were no attempts at removes of courses; to have meat enough for all to have a portion was a triumph. The siege was bad on both sides of the walls of Burgos. Though she consoled herself in the knowledge that she ate much better and more regularly than the common soldiers, Elizabeth thought often and longingly of the table her mother kept at Longbourn.

‘ _Dining during a siege is very different from the full tables and four and twenty families of Meryton,’_ Elizabeth had written to her father, ‘ _but at least there is the same ratio of sense to folly.’_

The Major General of the 7th Division was one such case. No one respected the Major General, least of all the competent colonels of regiments, all of whom had been in the Peninsula since ‘08 and had generally earned each promotion in the ranks. They all had good reason to despise their commander: he did not know how to march.

On Elizabeth's first retreat (from Burgos back to Portugal), the Major General decided not to follow the route ordered by the Viscount of Wellington because it was too wet, took another, could not find the bridge, and, in his bewilderment, decided just to wait on the bank instead of finding an alternate route... thus causing the entire division of nearly six thousand men to go missing. The incandescent fury amongst the colonels was hilarious to behold. Elizabeth had seen Colonel Fitzwilliam angry before, but was delighted to see that when he lost his temper, he was not, like some men, mean or violent or sulky or loud. He was unguardedly sarcastic.

“Welcome to the army, where if they find a man too useless even for the militia they make him a major general,” he griped, when Elizabeth, appointed a scout by the ladies’ wagon, had ridden up to where the colonel and the other senior officers of the second brigade had clustered on a ridge, to better observe the mass of confused men lined up on the bank.

Colonel Kirke, whose regiment marched behind Colonel Fitzwilliam, rode up then saying, “Fitzwilliam, why aren't we going forward?”

“Incompetence,” replied he.

“Major incompetence?” asked Elizabeth. “Or general?”

“Both,” replied her husband. “Of course he would pick a route with _no bridge._ The road was too wet? How about a river crossing with no bridge? That is not in the _least_ wet.”

“And he has... just decided to do nothing now there is no bridge,” said Colonel Kirke, with furrowed brow and bewildered aspect.

“The total absence of bridge is too much for him,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam. “There _should_ be a bridge, but there is not. What a shock! We must go over this curious absence of bridge for the rest of the day in order to really understand it. For God’s sake, does he _want_ the French to catch up and attack us?”

“He might,” said Colonel Kirke, dryly. “For after all, we nearly missed Salamanca thanks to his navigational skills. He must want his share of glory, same as any other division commander.”

“Do you think he consults maps?” asked the colonel of heavy infantry.

“I don't think he knows what they are,” replied the colonel of the light infantry. “He's managed to be in Spain this long without picking up a word of the language.”

“That is not true,’” replied the colonel of heavy infantry. “He knows ‘siesta.’ He appears to be taking one now.”

The colonel of the Portuguese division came galloping back from his conference with the first division’s colonels and managed to convey, through eloquent hand gestures and less eloquent English, that Wellington was approaching. The complete absence of six thousand men and officers could not be ignored.

Wellington and several aides-de-campe rode up to them on the ridge, splattering mud and curses in equal measure.

“Colonels,” said Wellington, inclining his head.

They all bowed from the saddle, a trick Elizabeth admired and had no idea how to imitate.

“Might I inquire just what you are doing?”

The colonels looked at each other and the eldest officer, the colonel of the light infantry, replied, “Comparing orders, sir.”

“Ah. And what discrepancies have you gentlemen found?”

The colonel of the light infantry cleared his throat significantly before saying, “It is not _my_ place to critique _either_ set of orders, sir.”

“Mrs. Fitzwilliam,” said General Wellington, turning towards her. “I had expected to next see you in a ballroom in Lisbon. Might I inquire what you are instead doing on this ridge?”

Elizabeth felt vaguely self-conscious. It was easy to be witty on indifferent subjects, for a quarter hour in a ballroom; to be deft enough to give information on insubordination and mismanagement without being insubordinate herself, or having it seem her husband was questioning orders from a superior officer, struck her as absurdly difficult. She gestured at the scene below to gain time, when inspiration struck. “Admiring the view, sir. It is picturesque in the extreme.”

“If you mean the foreground of full of perplexed cattle,” said His Grace, casting a critical eye at the milling troops below, “you are not far wrong, Mrs. Fitzwilliam.”

“That, sir, and the requisite ruined bridge. A composition more fastidious than correct, but we poor subjects in the second distance cannot question how the painter chose to set us down. We can only remain as we are and look about in perplexity, hoping a master will come and fix any errors in placement.”

Wellington caught all the inferences of this and groaned. “Good God,” said he. “This is an infamous army!” He gave several swift orders to his aides-de-campe before tipping his bicorn to Elizabeth. “I thank you for the lecture in the picturesque, Mrs. Fitzwilliam; it is become sadly rare to find anyone with any wit about ‘em and you are full up with it.”

All six riders remaining on the ridge watched with interest as Wellington galloped to the Major General and said absolutely nothing. He merely pointed.

(“You did not say anything, sir?” Elizabeth later asked, when they were all safely in the expected ballroom in Lisbon.

“My dear Mrs. Fitzwilliam,” replied he, “what really could be said?”)

The great mass of men below began sluggishly to shift, to order itself, to regroup and redirect. The aides-de-campe spread out and chivied on each company, like gleaming red and gold bulldogs.

“Good old hook nose,” said the Portuguese colonel, with satisfaction.

“Er, best not to repeat that phrase in General Wellesley’s hearing, sir,” said Colonel Kirke.

“I must echo Colonel Kirke’s advice,” agreed Colonel Fitzwilliam.  “But I commend your grasp of idiom, Colonel Algarve.” He turned to wink at Elizabeth, saying, “Well done, Mrs. Fitzwilliam. I _thought_ I had married the wittiest person of my acquaintance, but it is a pleasant thing to have the Viscount of Wellington confirm it.”

“My blushes, Colonel Fitzwilliam!”

“Careful as you go, madame,” said the colonel of heavy infantry. “We have wasted a great deal of time, and I daresay we shall be much harried by the French cavalry tomorrow.”

“Wellington is come, I cannot think we are in such dire straits as that,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam. Colonel Kirke nodded.

The colonel of heavy infantry shook his head. “That hardly matters, the time has still been lost. He shall set us to match in the right direction, but those Frenchies are devilish fast, and they know the countryside.”

“They have to,” said the Portuguese colonel, spitting out a wad of tobacco. “They live off it.”

“And it is impossible to disguise the march of an entire division; they shall catch up with us. Tell the ladies not to separate from each other, Mrs. Fitzwilliam.”

Elizabeth did so, but as they were not harried that evening, or the day after, she began to think Colonel Fitzwilliam had the right of it; Wellington had corrected their division in time. But, that evening, when there was a break in the rain, the baggage train came under attack. Elizabeth had been riding before the bulk of the wagons, side by side with Mrs. Kirke, and found herself wishing that she had not so trusted in her steed’s phlegmatic temperament and instead learnt to keep a better seat. Even poor Lord Orville could not fail to be startled by the suddenness and nearness of the mass of horses and guns and for some minutes, as Elizabeth more-or-less jumped from her horse and scrambled to get away from its mad rolls upon the ground, she was quite convinced that her horse was dead, and she was more anxious at the expense of replacing him than about the French troops attacking.

“Lizzy!” called Mrs. Kirke, anxiously.

“Here!” Elizabeth gasped out.

“Shelter in the wagons!”

This seemed good advice. She had to run quite a ways, and through a great deal of mud, to find one that was not being shot at, but she at last leapt onto one that was surrounded by redcoats and that people were taking care not to hit.

Elizabeth realized why very quickly.

She was surrounded by barrels of gunpowder.

There were two thoughts that fought through the morass of fear and confusion: one, the supply wagons were now separated from each other, and worse of all, the bulk of the regiment ahead of them; and, two, that she was hiding in a powder wagon while enemy troops were firing. Elizabeth felt very keenly her bad luck in having been separated from Mrs. Kirke, who had probably had cause to hide in numerous powder wagons during her long career in the army.   

As Elizabeth was roughly six months a colonel’s wife she had little experience upon which she could fall; indeed, she became rather vexed that her wrist should ever read ‘Fitzwilliam.’ If it were not for him, she might be sitting at home in Longbourne, listening to Lydia and Kitty argue and Mary murder Mozart at the instrument—

“Marriage to Colonel Fitzwilliam brought me that benefit, at least,” said Elizabeth, to herself. “But what is to be done now?”

It was vital to her to escape the powder wagon before any kind of shot sparked it, and killed her. The danger was very real; the driver and his team of four horses had already cut and run.

Before she could decide on the fittest course of action, she heard the cessation of gunshots, and someone calling out in French. No officers seemed to be by this part of the supply train; Elizabeth heard the redcoats all murmur their confusion in English. She leapt down quickly from the wagon, and endeavoring to put as much space between herself and the powder barrels as possible, ran up nearly against a line of British foot soldiers. The captains had drilled the men into forming empty squares so often the men had unthinkingly formed one, around the last two powder wagons of the train, several upset mules carrying flour, and a wagon filled with meat from all the cattle slaughtered before the retreat.

The quartermaster's wife, hiding behind this last, made a frantic gesture at Elizabeth to come hide with her; Elizabeth was nearly by her side when the French officer, recognizing the expensive cut and cloth of Elizabeth’s riding habit, called out, “Madame, I beg you will instruct your husband to surrender these mules and these wagons! We shall let you go along your way if you do.”

“How generous,” Elizabeth muttered, but now everyone was looking at her and she could not run. With reluctance, she walked away from the quartermaster’s wife and stood before the beef wagon, near the driver’s seat, six feet and two redcoats away from the French. She looked over the line of shakos at the French officer. He was not much older than her, and looked very tired and rather thin. The men behind him were not in much better condition.

Colonel Fitzwilliam had mentioned the French had been having trouble supplying troops in both Russia and Spain; Elisabeth was somewhat surprised to see how true this was and briefly considered turning over the wagon behind her. Then she realized the officer was looking hungrily at the powder wagons, rather than at any of the stores.

“Sir, I am sorry but I cannot hear you,” said Elizabeth, in her clumsy schoolroom French. She spoke quite loudly, so she might be heard over the panicked squeals of the horses and donkeys. “What do you want?”

“We wish for you to surrender these supplies, madame...?”

“Fitzwilliam,” Elizabeth supplied.

The French officer looked puzzled at this name. Elizabeth tried to recall any French words with ‘tz’ in them, and said uncertainly, “My husband is not here.”

The officer said, “Ah, your husband is Colonel Fitzwilliam.”

Though Elizabeth reminded herself that it only stood to reason that a French officer would know the names of the commanding officers of the battalions sent against his own, her first thought was ‘Oh God, they have fought him already.’

The officer said, “We have had the pleasure of meeting Colonel Fitzwilliam already, have we not, Lieutenant?”

The thin, mousy lieutenant beside the first officer looked momentarily confused before saying, “Ah, the colonel at the head of the column. Yes, captain, we fought with him already.”

“You shot him off his horse, I seem to recall.”

“Indeed, I did, captain.”

For a moment, Elizabeth thought she might faint, or burst into tears, but she did neither. She merely asked, very woodenly, “Indeed, sir, where was this?”

“Up the road, madame,” said the captain, sorrowfully. “It was a pity to shoot him, but we are soldiers; we must kill each other or betray the sacred trust our governments have placed upon us.”

The thought then occurred to Elizabeth: ‘Surely, if Richard were dead, I would know? We are soulmates, that must imply a bond beyond the traditional.’ It seemed to her a very good idea indeed to test this. If the captain were lying, and had never actually met Colonel Fitzwilliam, much less fought with him, he would agree to anything Elizabeth said about Colonel Fitzwilliam-- especially if it were a lie said as if it were true. A missing limb seemed plausible enough.

She therefore asked, in a trembling voice, “Did he die...?” The adverb escaped her. “Brave? He was always brave. He did not cry out when they cut his arm off at Salamanca.”

“Indeed, madame,” the captain hastened to assured her. “He died in a manner both honorable and courageous.”

His lieutenant agreed, "Indeed, madam, he fought as if he had both his arms."

This was the most plausible thing either French officer had said, for, as Colonel Fitzwilliam had all his limbs, he certainly fought as if he still had possession of all of them. 

‘Thank God,’ thought Elizabeth, putting a hand over her mouth, to hide a very inappropriate smile. She nearly laughed with relief but had to turn away and pretend to be having hysterics instead.

“I am sorry,” said the captain, kindly, “this news is a shock.”

Elizabeth was not a very good actress, but she was a spirited one, and talented at improvisation; she had lost her gloves somewhere, and let the captain see the ‘Fitzwilliam’ on her wrist as mounted the driver’s seat of the wagon and reached for the lantern hanging there.

The captain began to look uncertain as to his course.

‘Good,’ thought Elizabeth. She had not liked that he had underestimated her, or that he had lied about her husband, and she was always, spitefully provoked into retaliation when someone tried to intimidate her.

She quite unnecessarily said, “Colonel Fitzwilliam was my soulmate, you know.”

“I had not known, madame,” said the captain, beginning to be actively worried.

“My soulmate,” Elizabeth repeated, pretending to be fascinated with her wrist.

“Euuuuuuh,” said the captain. The men behind him were beginning to shift uneasily.

Elizabeth saw the men before her start to do the same thing. They greatly respected her, as the Colonel’s Wife, but they did not know her, or how she would act.

“I feel,” said Elizabeth, struggling with the conjugation, “I am died. I am dead? I am dead with him.”

“What—”

Elizabeth, lantern in hand, turned her back on him and winked at the quartermaster’s wife. This lady looked considerably puzzled before Elizabeth hopped down and began walking with grim aspect and quick step towards the powder wagons.

In Spanish more fluent than Elizabeth’s, the quartermaster’s wife cried out, “Run you fools, she means to blow up the powder wagons!” Then, in the same tone but in English she called, “Stand your positions, men, the colonel’s wife has a plan!”

The French captain began to really panic, but was held off by the British soldiers, and, unsupported by his own, who had begun to realize just what the English milady was about, had no recourse but to cry, “Madam, there is no need for this!”

Elizabeth wanted to mangle Horatio's line about being more an antique Roman than a Dane, to inform the captain she was more an ancient Egyptian than an Englishwoman, and if she was going to die, she was going to take as many people with her as possible. Alas, her French was insufficient for the task. She could only say, in throbbing accents, “I do not care if I die now, if I can take with me the men who murdered my husband!”

She was by now uncomfortably close to the first powder wagon and shot the quartermaster's wife a look of mute appeal.

This good lady rushed through the mules to Elizabeth, setting them all to braying. She cried out in Spanish, “The lady means it, you had better run!” She pretended to seize Elizabeth, as Elizabeth drew back her arm to throw the lantern, and helpfully added, “Oh God she is determined! I do not know how long I can hold her!”

The French foot soldiers had always known the English were mad, and at this new proof of it, lost no time in running away. The infantry obligingly fired on the retreating French, which provided at least some of the promised explosions. The quartermaster’s wife continued to shout in Spanish until the French were far distant, at which point she switched to English and said, “There now, Mrs. Fitzwilliam, they’re gone— and let me just... move you from the powder wagons and take the lantern— thank you.”

Elizabeth gave over the lantern at once, and was very glad to see the quartermaster’s wife carefully taking it back to the other wagon. Elizabeth had to sit down on the crosstrees of the nearest powder wagon from actual weakness.

“There, there, Mrs. Fitzwilliam,” said the quartermaster's wife, taking a seat beside her, and patting her shoulder. “It is over now and you showed yourself well. I think I caught some of that, but what did they say to you, that they believed you would blow up the wagon?”

“Yes, they did.”

The quartermaster’s wife gave this information to the nearest corporal, who was long at debating whether or not his men should stay all in formation, or if one should be sent ahead to report in to that squadron's lieutenant. Elizabeth would have preferred him to report into Colonel Fitzwilliam but did not think it right to so circumvent military order as to make the smallest, quickest private chosen for this mission speak to so august a personage as a Colonel.

The private being sent off to his lieutenant, the quartermaster's wife turned her attention back to Elizabeth. “I shall fetch you a dram of brandy and you shall be better presently. Just sit and breathe, madame.”

Elizabeth did so, and felt considerably better, especially as she soon heard a corporal tell his men, “Look sharp, there's an officer coming!”

She reasoned with herself that Colonel Fitzwilliam had duties greater than securing his regiment's powder wagons but as she watched horse and rider approach she realized it was him, and was so glad she nearly cried.

As soon as he saw her, he sprang off his horse and swept her up in his arms. “Lizzy, thank God!”

She was too frazzled to speak but accepted his embrace with very real relief.

The colonel pulled back and scanned her anxiously for any injury. Elizabeth did the same. He was muddy but uninjured; indeed, only the derangement of his uniform, a new dent in his metal gorget, and a rip on his sleeve spoke to his engagement in the recent attack. “Are you quite well? The French soldiers were shouting that a mad Englishwoman was threatening to blow up the powder wagons, and I thought—”

“You thought of me?” asked Elizabeth. “Oh darling! I’m flattered.”

The hands formerly resting on her shoulders now gripped them anxiously. “My dear, did _you_ threaten to blow up the powder wagons?”

“Only two of them,” said Elizabeth. “This was a resistance motivated by spite rather than insanity. A French captain told me that his lieutenant had killed you. A very little probing proved this a lie, so I thought to offer up a more dramatic lie, that I was so deranged with grief I would blow up the powder wagons. I was very ably assisted in this by the quartermaster’s wife. I wish you will mention her in the dispatches.”

Colonel Fitzwilliam stared at her in mild disbelief. “Lizzy, you realize the French almost entirely abandoned their attack on my regiment because you threatened to set fire to enough powder to destroy the whole baggage train?”

“No,” said she thoughtfully. “I had no idea the wagons might cause that large of an explosion. I suppose in my inexperience I was a little too enthusiastic, but—”

The colonel was now helpless with laughter.

“I thought I was being very clever,” she said, in a mock injured tone.

“You were, my darling,” he managed to get out, kissing her forehead. “My God! You are not too shaken?”

“Oh no, the quartermaster’s wife gave me a little brandy de Jerez and I was quite fine. I have, however, lost my horse, gloves, and hat. Have you any notion where any of them might be?”

He waved absently at some of the men clustered about them to go back to their tasks, saying,”I think your gloves and hat are an honorable casualty of this skirmish, but Mrs. Kirke has your horse. I was very certain my heart stopped when I saw you were not on it.” Seeing that this distressed her, he changed the subject, and began brushing the crust of dried mud off the right side of her riding habit. “Lizzy, you are all over dirt. Did you fall off your horse?”

“Yes,” said she, and suddenly laughed.

“Amused you were finally right about being thrown from Lord Orville?”

“No,” she replied, “A gentlewoman of my acquaintance once accused me of looking quite savage for having muddy petticoats. I really do wonder what she would think of me now!”


	8. In which Mr. Wickham gets punched in the face

The horrible, muddy retreat to Portugal passed in increasing misery and disorganization but without further incident (at least for the second brigade of the 7th Division, and its shattered supply train). Elizabeth had never been so happy to see anything, even Colonel Fitzwilliam’s matching soulmark, as she was to see, in their billet at Lisbon, a copper tub full of hot water. When she was at last clean, and had passed nearly three days dozing on and off, Elizabeth awoke to a letter on her pillow, bearing the best possible news: Mr. Bingley had at last proposed.

Elizabeth called out from the bedroom, “Jane is to be married!” when Colonel Fitzwilliam came back into their quarters, whistling Mozart’s oboe concerto, a sure sign he was pleased with how the day’s practice maneuvers had gone.

“I am very glad to hear it,” Colonel Fitzwilliam said, unbuckling his sword and leaning it against his dressing table as he came through the door. “Mr. Bingley is a most gentleman-like man, and nearly as sweet-tempered as your sister. They are well matched. One thing I cannot understand— Darcy particularly asked Marjorie to invite Bingley to her ball this April. It is almost November. How could it have taken so long for them to fix it?”

She laughed. “Just because you met me in March and married me in April does not mean every couple must proceed so speedily to the altar.”

“That is true,” he acknowledged, sitting on the edge of the bed, to better kiss her and glance over her letter from Jane. “I forget not every man feels some pressure over his marching orders. When are they to be married?”

“As soon as you return to London, to observe your new recruits,” said Elizabeth. “Jane begs I will write at once to tell her when. I am to be her witness! And Darcy to be Bingley’s.”

With a laugh, Colonel Fitzwilliam said, “Poor Darcy! When he atones, he flagellates himself in the public square. To sign as a witness the two matches he most worked to prevent? I do not think I could do so. But I always winter in England; there is no point in wintering in Portugal, pressed as it is for supply. I cannot imagine the price of bread when the other regiments catch up with us and cross the Portuguese border. I need only a day or two more to ensure the junior officers know what they are about, then it is a week to Spithead— I must then report to London, but leave shall not be difficult to get thereafter. Can they wait so long to be married?”

“I daresay they can. That is, what, two weeks total? Banns require four, and when she wrote me, the banns had been posted. That makes three weeks total from the engagement to my appearance. Jane has patience enough for a week more.”

“Does Mr. Bingley?”

She playfully swatted his shoulder with her letter. “Richard!”

“I must speak as I find,” said he, catching her hand and kissing it. “Come now, _ma belle au bois dormant_ , do you mean to be up and dressed today? Or do you mean to receive everyone in your bed, like Madame Recamier?”

“I have not the slightest intention of receiving anybody today except you,” said Elizabeth and, after making him very welcome indeed, got out of bed long enough to dash off a congratulatory note to Jane, informing her of their return. It was less easy to arrange everything for their return to England, and less easy still to get there. Elizabeth had recalled feeling faintly nauseous the first few days on the crossing from England to Portugal, but had not really remembered how unpleasant it was to be seasick, nor had she experienced a storm at sea. That was enough to make her feel so overwhelmed she would not believe Colonel Fitzwilliam when he reported that they were finally docked at Spithead. She doubted even the evidence of her eyes, when he coaxed her out of the cabin and onto the deck, in preparation to disembark.

“Colonel Fitzwilliam,” said she, hanging desperately onto a rope the captain’s wife had kindly led her to, “I think I must be delirious. Is that not your cousin Darcy waiting above the docks?”

“Hm?” He turned from his conversation with a lieutenant of marines and strode with enviable ease to the ship’s railing. “And so it is! Any letter should have anticipated our arrival by only two or three days, even with the storm. I cannot think how he managed to reach Spithead so quickly. He must have changed horses at every coaching inn.”

“Oh no,” Elizabeth nearly wailed. “Your cousin, the high stickler, has come to meet us when I have not changed my gown in nine days— nine days spent being sick over the rail of a boat!”

“Frigate.”

“ _Floating coffin_.”

A bit guiltily Colonel Fitzwilliam said, “It looks as if Georgiana is come, as well.”

Elizabeth turned to her husband with a baleful glare and, gathering together what little dignity still remained to her, lurched back down to her cabin to hide her tangled locks under a delicate lace cap she had made out of part of a mantilla, and to clean the crust of sea spray from her gown with a clothes brush. Everything else had been packed away and was being carried off. She mourned the preemptive loss of what little credit she had with Mr. Darcy.

When she came up again the colonel had realized she was angry with him, but did not understand why. He did look worried and contrite as he said, “I am sorry, my dear. If it had not been for the storm, you would have had time enough to make yourself presentable— but really, you need very little. When you were all over dirt, with your hair wild, sitting on the crosstree of the powder wagon— that was when I realized I'd never see anything in the world to please me more.”

She was inclined to be mollified by this praise, and hated that she was. With a tartness only a little exaggerated, Elizabeth said, “Yes, and had I seen the Darcys just after I had successfully driven off enemy combatants, I should not mind their seeing me by surprise. But this is a planned arrival after a far more ignominious struggle, against nothing more than the contents of my stomach. I wish you had consulted me, before asking them to meet us. I would have told you I would not feel up to seeing anyone, let alone someone as critical of me as Mr. Darcy.”

Colonel Fitzwilliam’s expression cleared. “Ah! I see. I shall hear that in mind, in future. But, in this case, there is no need to glare daggers at me. I did _not_ ask them.”

“How on earth did they come to be here then?”

Georgiana give the answer. Her eagerness overcame her shyness and she rushed to Elizabeth with gloved hands outstretched. “Mrs. Fitzwilliam! I packed as soon as I received your letter saying you would be sailing from Lisbon to Spithead but I was in such a quake we should miss you.”

Elizabeth took her hands and kissed the air above Georgiana’s cheeks, to best avoid pressing her own horrible gown against Georgiana’s very pretty pomona green velvet pelisse. “My dear! But I am sure I did not ask you to travel all this way when we would be shortly in London?”

“No,” said Georgiana, deflating a little. “But I thought— I thought it might be nice, after all that happened— with the retreat from Burgos and everything— to, to take the carriage with us rather than to ride on horseback again, for so long a journey. And Matlock House is all closed up for the summer, everyone is in Hampshire, so they have not yet received your letter— so I thought, well, they must stay with us! I had rooms prepared. And then I thought, since they are staying with us, we ought to go and bring them here. But I should have—”

“No, no,” protested Elizabeth, feeling guilty, though not enough to stop feeling annoyed. “I was merely surprised. I did not wish to inconvenience you or your brother.”

Colonel Fitzwilliam came up to Georgiana and put an arm around her shoulders to embrace her. “This is a delightful surprise, Georgiana. We are both very touched by your thoughtfulness and are very pleased to see you, and even better pleased to ride with you back to London and stay with you there. Thank you.” He reached over her with his free hand. “Darcy.”

Mr. Darcy had been hanging back, but now stepped forward and shook hands with them both. It was very clear from his reticence and his greeting, that this scheme had all been Georgiana’s, and despite his own discomfort in surprising them, he had not liked to crush Georgiana’s enthusiasm. Elizabeth, tired as she was, and as disgusting as she felt, pushed herself to be agreeable to both Darcys, ate far more than she should of the rich meal Georgiana had painstakingly ordered at the inn, and took care to be sick very quietly and in private.

“My poor Lizzy,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam, handing her a cup of ginger tea. “I don't think you managed anything but ship’s biscuit and water for the past week at least; and that was after a month and a half of siege rations. The soup was difficult for even me to finish; I was in a fair way to being vanquished by the removes.”

Elizabeth, wanting nothing so much as to sink into the floorboards of the inn and never get up again, managed to weakly sip her tea. “It is that as much as my continuing sense of still being aboard a ship. Can there be reverse sea sickness?”

“I am sure,” said he, solicitously taking the cup again. “There is a bath ready for you, if you can bear the thought of water. Shall I call up Mrs. Pattinson to attend you?”

“I feel too disgusting an object to be seen by anyone.”

“Anyone but me?” said he, laughing. “That is one aspect of marriage they do not mention. But I have learnt to brush hair remarkably well now, and I daresay if I ever tire of soldiering, I should have a very successful career as a lady’s maid.” He affected an unconvincing air of subservience. “Shall I take your dress, madame?”

“Very good, Fitzwilliam,” said she, and they amused themselves with this until Elizabeth at last felt human enough to ask, “You need not answer, but is this the first time Georgiana has been really enthusiastic about any travel, since Ramsgate?”

“Yes. I was surprised by the strength of her attachment to you. She would hardly have come so far for _me_ .” He paused and said, “No, never mind, I am _not_ surprised. All my sisters are much older than her, and I can scarcely believe she could get on with Anne. Darcy does his best for her, and I think would probably set sail for Antarctica on her behalf had she expressed an inclination for a penguin, but he is ten years her senior, and is a man; she can hardly make him her confidante. Though, knowing Georgiana’s disposition, she is more likely to hope to be someone else's confidante than to hope for one of her own.”

“And I wrote her such long letters during the siege! Oh I feel a wretch for ever being annoyed. Make Darcy go drink port with you somewhere, I shall steal Georgiana away for a long cose.”

She and Colonel Fitzwilliam had guessed rightly; Georgiana hung off of Elizabeth’s every word, like holly off the banisters during Christmas, and was considerably startled when Elizabeth asked her about her interests and how she had passed her spring and summer. She grew only really eloquent about Pemberley, or about her brother’s doings, and the letters the eldest Miss Bennet had been so good as to send her in response to her own tentative thank you for dining with her once in April.

“It must be so pleasant to have so many sisters,” said Georgiana, wistfully.

“You say so because they are not yours! For my part, I have always longed for a brother.”

“Oh yes and my brother is truly the best and kindest of men, but I cannot— I cannot talk to him like his. As I do you. I should be afraid of boring him. He has so much business to attend to, and—”

Elizabeth was alarmed to see the tears start to Georgiana's eyes. “What is wrong, Georgiana?”

“I have disappointed him so already,” said she, tremulously. “I cannot bear to think of disappointing him again, even in little things.”

“Oh my dear!” Elizabeth cried, putting aside her work basket and taking Georgiana in her arms. “Do not think that! Your brother loves you unconditionally. You could murder someone and he would bury the body. And so would Colonel Fitzwilliam. And I have not the strength to wield a shovel but I would wash the bloodstains from your gown.”

Georgiana was startled into a laugh.

“My dear, there is nothing you can do to put yourself beyond the length and breadth of our loves. You must not continue thinking so!”

“But you know not what I have done!” And so poured forth the events of Ramsgate last summer: her loneliness, Mr. Wickham’s kindness, his compliments, his reassurances, his protestations of love, and then the revelation of his soulmark. Georgiana had wanted to believe him so very badly and she had no reason to doubt his protestations or to think ‘George’ did not refer to her; her only uneasiness had been in his insistence upon running away together, without her brother’s knowledge. Surely, she had argued, their soulmarks matching were proof enough that they should be together. But consider, Mr. Wickham had replied, that her own mark had not yet appeared. He knew what her mark would read, and she knew too—but Darcy was such a high stickler, and so overprotective, he would not let them marry until her soulmate appeared. He had kissed her— her first kiss, for she always been too shy for parlor games— and asked her if she could wait. Anything might befall either one of them. Would she truly throw away their only chance at happiness?

She could not bear to do so— and yet, she could not bear to leave her brother’s protection so suddenly, as if in shame. Darcy had surprised her at Ramsgate, a quick visit to escort her to a concert she had mentioned she would like to attend, and she had poured out the whole. He had gone pale with anger and, after telling her that true matches were never partial names and that Mr. Wickham had deceived her, strode out of the room.

Mr. Wickham she had seen only once again. He had come up to her on a promenade, demanding to know why she had not trusted him and now all was lost unless she did not flee, and flee immediately. Mr. Darcy approached with thunderous aspect, at which point that Mr. Wickham had cursed and fled.

This was better than Elizabeth had thought, but not by much.

“And I cannot help but think that there is something more I ought to have done,” hiccuped Georgiana. “I wish I could have told him how wrongly he had behaved! I wish sometimes I could shew him my mark, so he knows he was mistaken!”

“You need not show him your mark; I daresay he knew already you were not a match.”

“I wish I could do it all over; that I could behave in a manner that— that— oh, I do not know! I wish I could be as brave and clever as you were the powder wagons, I suppose. But I can never tell my brother how badly I still wish to speak to Mr. Wickham, for he will think that I am still in love with Mr. Wickham, but I am not, I just wish to tell him how badly he has hurt me and how upset I am at all he has done. I shall get no peace until I know he understands how wicked he was, and I know that he will not behave so towards any other young lady, but I have not the courage for it.”

Elizabeth let Georgiana put a new crust of salt on the shoulder of her gown, and patted her hair and fussed over her the way she did when Kitty was crying her heart out. (Mary generally did not cry at setbacks, but instead moralized unceasingly, and Lydia preferred to go to Jane, who had more sympathy for her than Elizabeth did).

Colonel Fitzwilliam and Mr. Darcy came to the parlor to see Georgiana had cried herself to sleep on Elizabeth’s shoulder. Elizabeth caught Colonel Fitzwilliam’s eye and nodded. He stole in and quietly picked up Georgiana to carry her to her room. Darcy looked stricken.

“She is well,” said Elizabeth, when Colonel Fitzwilliam had gone. “She told me about Ramsgate, that is all.”

“Ah.” Darcy was still holding his hat; he looked down at it in bewilderment, as if someone had planted it on him while he was not attending, before tossing it aside. “Her spirits are still very much affected. And it—” He paused and said, “I am sorry we have imposed on you and Richard, but I did not like to stay in London. Mr. Wickham incurred several debts of honor among the militia and was forced to resign his commission, and flee to London. We saw him there, just in passing on the street. Georgiana was very distressed. This scheme of hers, for meeting you at Spithead, was the first thing that has successfully distracted her.”

“Oh poor Georgiana,” cried Elizabeth.

Mr. Darcy said, almost helpless, “I do not know how to fix this for her.”

“There are some things you cannot fix,” said Elizabeth, impetuously going up to him and pressing his hand. “But you have done all you can to alleviate her present pain. You distracted her, you let me speak with her— Mr. Darcy, you cannot blame yourself because she needed to talk over the whole affair with another woman. Blame me for being absent, or Richard for causing me to go out of England, or Wellington for stationing our regiment in Spain, or Napoleon for invading Spain to begin with, but pray, do not blame yourself for something you cannot help.”

He put his hand over hers and looked at her with pained and anxious mein, as he struggled to express what did not come easily. “For so long it has been only Georgiana and myself. She has very few memories of our father and fewer still of our mother. I know I cannot supply the lack of two such excellent parents, but there are times when I see how short I fall of them, and... I do not enjoy that.”

Elizabeth laughed and squeezed his hand. “No one does. But you do _not_ fall short of being an excellent brother. In fact, Georgiana fears falling short of being a good sister to you! And, you know, you are not alone in caring for and protecting Georgiana. You have your Uncle Matlock and Aunt Catherine, for what good they can do. You have your cousins. You have Richard. And you have me. I have no hesitation in committing us both to your and Georgiana’s service when we are in England. We are family now.”

In a rare show of feeling, Darcy kissed her hand before releasing it. He was immediately embarrassed, and mumbling a ‘God bless you’ and a vague excuse about checking on his sister, fled the parlor.

'Men,' thought Elizabeth, amused. 'Ask of them an impossible task and they accept with the greatest fortitude imaginable, but give them a hint of compassion and they run from the room.'

 

***

 

Elizabeth was later glad of Georgiana's interference and the Darcy carriage; she felt a faint but persistent nausea the entire ride back to London. She did not like to think how much worse the feeling would be riding the entire way (though she thought, in moments of supreme irritation, if she had been left alone to pick far simpler dishes for every meal, she might not feel quite so ill.)

The feeling persisted even after they were all ensconced in the Darcy townhouse and she had been a week reunited with her sisters and mother, who were all up in London to procure Jane’s wedding clothes. This shopping expedition was less of an ordeal than hers had been, for Elizabeth had no stake in it, and she welcomed the distraction from a suspicion that perhaps over-rich meals were not to blame for her nausea. She thought briefly of asking her mother for advice, before imagining how this might play out, and deciding heartily against it.

To her aunt she must appeal, and as quickly as she could, without exciting the notice of any of her other sisters. It was difficult to tear herself from Jane, for they had missed each other more than could be assuaged by letters, but Mrs. Bennet was at last of assistance there; she took Jane away to her dressing room for the same mortifying chat about the marriage bed that Elizabeth had sat through, and freed Elizabeth and Mrs. Gardiner to speak to each other.

“Well, Lizzy, I suppose we shall have to make sure our stories align,” suggested Mrs. Gardiner, as they left the house. “Let us walk to St. Paul’s; the park there is very pretty at this time of year, and I know your passion for dead leaves.”

“Bribing me to your side with a walk, are you, Aunt?”

Mrs. Gardiner smiled. “If I must! Jane, I think, will be very startled by your mother’s lecture, and I must have you confirm my account, and not hers.”

Elizabeth laughed. “Indeed I shall! For yours was the truer account. At least, in my own experience.”

“I am very glad to hear it. Colonel Fitzwilliam treats you well?”

“Oh, extraordinarily so— so well that I have trained him as a substitute lady’s maid when mine is unavailable.”

“Lizzy!”

She smiled cheekily. “I understand what you mean to ask. Yes, I am extremely satisfied. I have never felt pained, except for the first time, and that passed quickly enough. Any uncomfortable evenings we have spent together have been because we were in a tent in the middle of a downpour, or marching through the night. And even then there were consolations. But I find I must ask your advice on the... er, consequences of such consolation....”

Her aunt looked at first surprised, but then turned to her with the glad cry, “My dear, you are not...? That is, you have been married since April. It is entirely within reason you are expecting. Or could be. Do you know?”

“I do _not_ know; I have merely a suspicion of it.”

Her aunt implored her to tell everything that had led her to such a conclusion, and they were so engrossed in this talk, Elizabeth did not notice the gentleman they nearly ran into.

“Why, it is Mr. Wickham!”  exclaimed Mrs. Gardiner. “Mr. Wickham, how do you do sir? I am delighted to see you once again.”

With a start, Elizabeth realized she had never informed her aunt Gardiner of Mr. Wickham’s perfidy. And here was Mr. Wickham, smiling and charming, expressing with every look and gesture his delight in seeing them once again even though Elizabeth knew he must be wishing the both of them at Jericho. He and Mrs. Gardiner were long in exchanging their good wishes and observations about how a London autumn quite paled in comparison to a Derbyshire one.

“And Miss Elizabeth Bennet,” said Mr. Wickham, turning towards her. “I am sorry I did not see you before the regiment departed for Brighton. I heard from your sisters that you had extended your stay in London. With so charming an aunt, I am not surprised.”

Elizabeth did not know how to speak to Mr. Wickham, knowing all she now did about him, and was not quick enough to keep her aunt from saying, “Indeed, that is kind of you Mr. Wickham, but _I_ was not the reason for my niece’s stay in London. She was married last April.”

“What glad tidings,” said he. “I suppose you met your husband in London, then, Mrs....?”

Unsure just how to attack this problem, Elizabeth settled on as little of the truth as she could. “No, sir, in Kent. But we were married in his parish, in London.”

Mr. Wickham had noticed her failure to give her last name and began looking uneasy. “In... indeed, Mrs...?”

“Mrs. Fitzwilliam,” said Elizabeth, with an insincere smile.

He seemed very struck by this. “Mrs. _Fitzwilliam_?”

“I think you are a little acquainted with my husband, Colonel Fitzwilliam?”

Mr. Wickham recovered admirably. “I used to see him very often, in Derbyshire. He is a most gentlemanlike man. I would wish you joy, but I think you must already have it, in having a spouse with such agreeable manners.”

“Yes, they are perfectly matched,” said Mrs. Gardiner proudly.

“I had thought him in Spain. For the past two or three years he has been in Spain, has he not?”

Elizabeth replied, “Yes, but last year he was on medical leave. He took the opportunity to visit with all his family.”

“Indeed,” was all Mr. Wickham could manage.

“And, as a military man yourself, I am sure you know that half the regiment is always in London. My husband winters here in order to train his new recruits.” She could not resist saying, “Shall I tell Colonel Fitzwilliam you are in town? He has long been expressing the desire to see you again, though I fear with his _obligations_ , it would be a very _early_ morning call.”

Mr. Wickham understood _that_ well enough, though Mrs. Gardiner was puzzled. He immediately took his leave of them and strode off, away from the lending houses from whence he had come.

Elizabeth was distracted enough after that meeting to agree to keep Lydia and Kitty with her for an extra day when Mrs. Bennet, Jane, Mary, and the Gardiners left that afternoon. She did not scruple to push the logistics of this off on her husband, and spent the rest of the day laying in her dressing room with a damp cloth over her aching head.

“Are you feeling well enough to come down to dinner?” Colonel Fitzwilliam asked, when Kitty and Lydia had been noisily installed in guest bedrooms, to Mr. Darcy’s unexpressed dismay, and Georgiana's mixed delight and anxiety. “I am happy to make your excuses. I always find my family most trying when I am newly home.”

“Do we even know why Kitty and Lydia are so wild to be in London one day more?” Elizabeth asked. “I was not paying attention when I agreed. I just wished them to stop complaining that they could not bear to leave this evening.”

“A mutual friend they had met that morning, or so said Lydia. Kitty, I think, would have preferred to return home, but Lydia would not allow it.”

“At least I may comfort myself in the knowledge that I have somewhat relieved Jane of her responsibilities. She has been so overwhelmed I scarcely had half-an-hour’s private conversation with her, and even then the subject was... somewhat uncomfortable for her.” She was suddenly glad of the washcloth, for it somewhat hid her blushes.

“Ah,” said her husband, laughing, “I had wondered why she could not look me in the eye when we took our leave of her.”

“I could not have her believing my mother!”

“No indeed. I daresay in two or three years time your sister may be able to ask me to pass the butter at table without blushing.” After a minute, Colonel Fitzwilliam said, “I cannot help but think your annoyance extends past your sisters. I have not been putting you too much in company this week? We really could not avoid dining with Brigadier St. John any more than we could avoid dining with Wellington at Lisbon.”

Elizabeth sat up and removed the washcloth from her face. She had two items she particularly wished to discuss and as satisfying as it would have been to say, “It is indeed something you have done; my aunt and I believe I am now a month with child,” she was in too foul a mood to endure high spirits from anybody, even her husband. The second it must be. “I ran into Mr. Wickham this morning.”

“The blackguard is still in London, is he? What did he say to you?”

This was speedily gone over before they had to dress for dinner, and Colonel Fitzwilliam promised to speak to Mr. Darcy over the port. It was not unsurprising that Mr. Darcy did not rejoin them for coffee after this unpleasant chat, particularly since Kitty and Lydia gave him no inducement to overcome his distress. The two youngest Bennets could not have been more irritating if they had made a bet to see which of them could irritate Elizabeth past the limits of human endurance.

Kitty and Lydia did not heed Elizabeth all when she tried to check them, at dinner, or afterwards. They were constantly quarreling, hissing invective at the other when they should have been attending, and trying to drag Georgiana into truly stupid arguments. Lydia kept shushing Kitty whenever she tried to privately air her grievances to Elizabeth, which of course meant Kitty burst in on Elizabeth as she was undressing for bed.

Elizabeth hastily set down the diamond earring in her hand and, with her sent away Mrs. Pattinson, so that Kitty could throw herself on Elizabeth’s lap and cry in privacy about how everything was monstrous unfair and Lydia was being absolutely _horrible_.

“Kitty, what exactly has Lydia done?” Elizabeth tried to maneuver necklace, earrings, and bracelet into her jewel case one handed, but had to give up in order to find a handkerchief. “Blow. That’s better. Now tell me just why you and Lydia were so dreadful today?”

“It wasn’t _me_ ,” said Kitty. “Lydia has been in a frightful temper since she was not allowed to go to Brighton and now—”

Lydia burst in then saying, “Kitty, I said you weren’t to bother Lizzy, now she is so very high and mi—”

“I am about the same height as I have ever been,” said Elizabeth. “Lydia will you sit and let me tell you just what a summer encampment is like? Summer is campaign season and it involves a great deal more hardship than you have ever experienced.” She dwelt on siege rationing and the muddy, rainy marches with grim relish and scrupled not to lay out the very darkest interpretation of the powder wagon affair. Kitty was very upset by it, and in a fair way to swear off redcoats altogether, if there was even the possibility of having to face off against the French with only her wits at hand. Lydia thought Elizabeth was exaggerating and would not believe a word of it.

“It is not fair,” Lydia complained. “You and Jane go off and have all the fun for yourselves and you keep me from having even a part of it!”

“Indeed Lydia?” Elizabeth asked coldly, patting a still sniffling Kitty on the shoulder.

“After you would not let me go to Brighton, you did not even think of sending me to China!”

“I have not been idle, Lydia; I have written a number of letters on your behalf, and discovered it will cost nearly two thousand pounds to get you to Canton. We must first hire a Cupid’s Bow Street Runner to find out who or where your soulmate may reside, then outfit you for China, then pay your fare, then hire a companion for you, and—”

“And so? Mama says you have eight thousand a year!”

“When the Army pays its officers,” said Elizabeth, “which they have not done for six months. And we have depleted what ready money we did have paying off some of the soldiers in the regiment too ill or injured to continue in the service.”

“I do not need a Cupid’s Bow Street Runner,” cried Lydia. “I can manage it by myself, I am not as stupid as you and Papa always think I am. I could very well manage on my own!”

“You are sixteen,” said Elizabeth. “That is full young to be traveling halfway across the world. Then too, there is the question of how to get you there respectably—”

“I do not care half as much as you do for all these _niceties_ ,” cried Lydia. “You are far too stuffy now Lizzy, stuffier even than Mary, and you will not make the slightest push to help me in anything I want, and Mama says you have so much pin money you could not possibly spend it in a year, and yet you balk at sending me to the only place where I can find my soulmate—”

“Do you speak Cantonese, or read Mandarin?” asked Elizabeth, beginning to lose her temper. “Have you secured a companion who can do either? Have you any notion of where to begin your search? There are so many things to consider before—”

“Did you consider all those thing when you were married?”

“Indeed I did!”

“You did not, Lizzy, you went to Kent and that was that! But if you will not even let me go to the seaside where the Chinese sailors congregate—”

“There is no port in Brighton.”

“There is!”

“Boats do not dock in Brighton, Lydia!”

“How do you know? You have never been there, and, thanks to you, neither have I!” Lydia grabbed her shawl off of Elizabeth’s dressing table and stormed off.

Kitty lingered and then, looking up at Lizzy said, timidly, “Lizzy, Lydia is going to do something very foolish if she is not allowed to start finding her soulmate.”

“Selfish girl,” muttered Elizabeth. “She cannot see two sisters married without demanding to be so as well! At sixteen I was not so eager to be married.”

“At eighteen I am not either,” said Kitty. “I told Lydia she should— she ought to talk to you and not to—”

Lydia stormed back in and grabbed Kitty by the arm. “Come now Kitty, I need an atlas to prove Lizzy wrong and I do not know where it is.”

Kitty was dragged off, looking hapless, just as Colonel Fitzwilliam walked in.

“My sisters are gone off to find an atlas,” Elizabeth informed him, automatically beginning to pack for the next day’s journey. “An ironic errand, for I really believe they will get lost in the library; they have never entered one before. Oh good Lord, I am exhausted. I tried to pack an empty jewel case when I distinctly remember throwing my earrings onto the mess on my dressing table.”

“Leave it for the evening. Come sit on the bed and I shall help you with your stays.” That accomplished, Colonel Fitzwilliam put his hands to her shoulders and with his thumbs smoothed out the tense muscles of her neck. Elizabeth sighed in pleasure.

“My poor Lizzy,” said he, stopping to press a kiss to the back of her neck. “And are you still feeling unwell?”

This was a calmer moment, and exhaustion had smothered out the worst sparks of her irritation. The idea of Colonel Fitzwilliam’s raptures was now so pleasing she could not resist. Elizabeth looked up at him and said, smiling, “Yes, and I am afraid it may continue a few months more.”

His hands stilled. “Lizzy, are you...?”

“My aunt says it is too early to be very certain; it is only after three months one can be relatively sure of carrying to term, but I think—”

“Oh Lizzy!” He swept her up into his arms and, showering her laughing face with kisses, said, “I thought you had already made me the happiest man alive, when you agreed to marry me, but a child!”

“Richard,” she protested, “it is barely a month, if so! Only one in every three or four cases makes it past the third month. Don’t rejoice just yet.” An unpleasant thought came to her. “Oh Lord, if this does go to term, will you be on campaign when I am in confinement?”

This sobered them both, and they were up very late discussing this. When they had married, Elizabeth had not been inclined to be parted from her husband, and insisted she would have any child abroad, if need be, but having been through some of the worst of the Spanish campaign, she was not so sure. She was not eager to go into labor possibly in a tent, or next to a soldier getting a limb amputated, or in the wagon of a baggage train. Having believed for so long that he would never have children, Colonel Fitzwilliam was not eager to miss the birth of his first, but with so much of Spain ceded to the French it seemed to him impossible to get leave during the summer campaign season. They were hours at tormenting themselves with logistics, and so found themselves still awake at two-o-clock, when several ill-conceived plans collided together in the foyer of the Darcy townhouse.

Colonel Fitzwilliam broke off their conversation at the sound of footsteps in the hall, then a very loud, “KITTY YOU WRETCH!”

“Perfect,” said Elizabeth, reaching for her dressing gown. “Will you come with me and look stern?”

“Aye, and I’ll hold a candle too.”

Colonel Fitzwilliam did an excellent job of looking stern, and even looked a little murderous, for when they had finished chasing Lydia down the stairs, they saw Kitty, in dressing gown and curl papers, holding back a very confused Mr. Wickham by his cloak. Georgiana, likewise attired, stood at the foot of the landing, with a fireplace poker upraised.

“What on earth is going on?” cried Elizabeth.

Mr. Wickham began to look really panicked. “Mrs. Fitzwilliam! Colonel Fitzwilliam! I... ah. Am... delighted to see you?”

“Here I was," said Colonel Fitzwilliam, "thinking the pleasure must all be ours. Miss Bennet, be so good as to drag the rat you have caught into the sitting room, before we wake every servant in the place. Hit him with the poker if he does not move fast enough, Miss Darcy.”

Mr. Wickham twisted in an attempt to break away, but Mr. Darcy then emerged scowling from his bookroom, where he had evidently been sleeping at his desk; Mr. Wickham came face-to-face with Mr. Darcy and froze.

A glare was enough; Mr. Wickham turned on his heel and marched into the sitting room. Elizabeth, seizing Lydia by the sleeve of her pelisse, said, “I think you have a great deal of explaining to do, Lydia. Come with me.”

A footman in a nightcap and dressing gown appeared at the servant’s staircase, looking confused; Elizabeth, shoving Lydia into the sitting room and pulling shut the door said, brightly, “I am sorry for waking you! My sisters are quarreling again. I shall resolve the argument; do not put yourself out. Pray tell everyone else to go to bed.”

The servants had evidently had enough of the youngest Miss Bennets, for the footman nodded and immediately retreated.

Elizabeth entered the room to see Colonel Fitzwilliam and Mr. Darcy standing before Mr. Wickham in identical attitudes, with arms crossed and scowls affixed. Kitty and Georgiana were sitting together on a small divan, shoulder to shoulder, trying to look brave and mostly looking terrified. Lydia flopped into a very expensive Louis XIV chair, looking mutinous. Elizabeth took the candle Colonel Fitzwilliam had set down and busied herself lighting the wax tapers in the wall sconces.

“Well?” asked Darcy, tersely.

“Mr. _Fitzwilliam_ Darcy,” said Mr. Wickham, drawing himself upright. There was an edge of cruelty to his smile. “You are still dressed. A late evening for you? I suppose it must be. It cannot be easy with so full a house. How can you sleep when your—”

“Enough,” snapped Darcy.

Colonel Fitzwilliam added, “I ought to tell you to name your second—”

“Richard!” protested Elizabeth, her free hand involuntarily going to her stomach. She had not thought, in all their talk of logistics, what she would do if her husband were to die before she gave birth, and now heartily regretted ever implying Colonel Fitzwilliam would challenge Mr. Wickham to a duel.

Colonel Fitzwilliam’s gaze flickered from her look of badly concealed fright to the hand on her stomach; he turned to Mr. Wickham and continued on, with his usual sarcasm, “But to do so would be tantamount to declaring you a gentleman. That title you have long abandoned.”

Darcy had observed this exchange with what seemed like absence of mind; he turned to Georgiana and Kitty and said, “Go back upstairs.”

Georgiana shrank into the divan but said, “No.”

“No?”

Kitty said, fretfully, “Miss Darcy and I did nothing wrong. Indeed, we _stopped_ something very wrong! We were as brave as Lizzy with the powder wagons, really, for Mr. Wickham is as bad as the French, or perhaps worse, because the French do not lie about being greedy. And we are not quite as witty, and so have not as much ammunition at hand, so I really think you should take that into consideration before looking at us like we are so very stupid.”

Elizabeth positioned herself by Lydia’s chair and checked, with one furious glare, Lydia’s attempt to get up and slink away. “Lydia, I have a wild guess that you have something to do with Mr. Wickham’s appearance here this evening.”

Lydia said, crossly, “If you hadn’t been so awful—”

“Mrs. Fitzwilliam hasn’t been in the least bit awful!” exclaimed Georgiana, heatedly. “And it is not Lydia’s fault for being taken in by such an awful man as Mr. Wickham. But—” turning to her brother, with furious tears starting in her eyes “— but I shall not go, not until I am assured that Mr. Wickham understands how wicked he has been!”

Mr. Wickham looked sorrowfully at Georgiana and said, “My dearest George, I know you are my soulmate—”

“You are _not mine_!” she declared.

“Alas,” sighed he, convincing no one but Lydia. “Can this be? Can I be so star-crossed that my one, true match is the soulmate of another? What torments are mine! How can I ever resign myself to seeing my dear one married to another, happy with another, carrying the child of another? Never a hope of happiness in this mortal life—”

“Speak on that subject one more time and I will make it so you cannot speak again,” said Darcy.

There was enough quiet menace in his tone to make even Mr. Wickham pause and look uneasy.

Colonel Fitzwilliam asked, “Wickham, to what do we owe the pleasure of this visit? Given what my wife said to you this morning, I thought it very clear that we were not mourning your absence from our circles.”

“Love,” said Mr. Wickham, but he was frightened now of Darcy’s anger and not as convincing. “True love, in fact.”

“That is not it at all!” burst out Kitty.

“Yes it is!” Lydia insisted. Desire to overtalk Kitty won in its brief struggle against the desire to keep a dignified, if sulky silence. “Mr. Wickham came across Kitty and me this morning and was so sad that Lizzy had snubbed him because now she was married to an honorable. And I said yes, Lizzy was such a high stickler now that she had an Earl as her papa-in-law and stays with Mr. Darcy when in town, and she had more pin money than she could spend and yet only sent us back lace veils, and Papa bottles of port and rubbishy old books, and wouldn’t even pay for me to go to China. And Mr. Wickham was very sad because he thought maybe he would have an ally in Lizzy, since her husband was also Miss Darcy’s guardian, but given all I said, he thought not, and wasn’t it sad that money turned people’s heads like this? And I said yes it was and if I had a fortune I should not behave half so shabby to my relations, and go about wearing diamonds that were worth the cost of my passage to China and still say I did not have the money to make a sister happy. Kitty said I shouldn’t speak like that about Lizzy since she’d nearly been killed by the French, and I said that was all guff and probably Papa exaggerating because Lizzy is his favorite and he’s always more alarmed about things that happen to her than to any of us, and Kitty said that was _not_ true, because Jane’s letter from Lizzy said—”

“Miss Lydia, there is no need for all this,” Wickham attempted to interject.

“Hush! _I_ am taking, not you! After all I have done for you, this is the very least you can do for me.” Lydia had always preferred some attention to none, however she got it; to captivate the whole room, even with tales of her wrongdoing, was now her chief desire. “But I shall leave Kitty out of this because she is disobliging and a coward to boot.”

“I am _not_ ,” protested Kitty.

Lydia ignored her. “So I said, well, I would not be cruel and keep Mr. Wickham from Miss Darcy even if I were married to a colonel, and if we were longer in London, I would work on Lizzy to let him see Miss Darcy. Mr. Wickham said that perhaps there was a way for me to help him even today, and he could then help me get to China. If I could put up a fuss about wanting to stay longer in London and contrive to unlock the door to Mr. Darcy’s house, he could come in the dead of night and surprise Miss Darcy. Isn’t that a fine joke?”

“A joke?” repeated Colonel Fitzwilliam, in tones of great incredulity.

“Yes, I could scarce agree for laughing. I could just imagine everyone’s faces when Miss Darcy managed to run off to the naval yard with Mr. Wickham. As soon as they were married, Mr. Wickham would help secure me a berth on a ship to China. He would fence Lizzy’s necklace for me.”

“Which you should not have taken!” burst out Kitty.

“Hold your breath to cool your porridge, Kitty, I did not _take_ it, I merely borrowed it. Lizzy I daresay could have bought it from the pawn shop the next morning. Indeed, I would have sent a note to her letting it know where it was.”

Elizabeth had been too shocked to speak, but soon she passed from shock to disgust and could no longer remain silent. “Lydia, do you know how very wrongly you have behaved? Have you any notion of what harm you could have done— not just to Miss Darcy, but to yourself? If anyone had caught you— good God, Lydia, five shillings’ worth of stolen property is enough to be condemned to death! The theft of a necklace—”

“And earrings, and a bracelet,” piped up Kitty

“Lydia, all together, that is well over a hundred pounds! Had you actually made it out the door, there would be a very real possibility of your being arrested, and then branded or transported— and you still would not have enough to pay your passage to and from China!”

“You always exaggerate the danger,” said Lydia.

“She does not, and is not,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam. “I have had men lashed until they could not stand for far less serious offenses.” Lydia opened her mouth to respond, but Colonel Fitzwilliam leveled on her a look that had made seasoned veterans quake in their lines. “We will come back to you, later.”

“Kitty,” said Elizabeth, “was this what you kept trying to tell me about today?”

“Yes, but Lydia would not let me! So I had to tell Miss Darcy, instead, and she was very upset because she was _not_ a match with Mr. Wickham, as Lydia would have _known_ if she had just _asked_ , and then we hatched our plan, and it worked. Mostly.”

Georgiana, clearly forcing herself to speak said, “Yes, for I am sure Mr. Wickham would have taken the money and fled and not given it back to Miss Lydia at all. So— so—”

Kitty piped in, “So we waited in the foyer and I grabbed him when he came in, and Miss Darcy threatened him with a poker and told him he was a bad and wicked man. I had to stuff Lydia in the closet to make it down before her, but I made it, and I grabbed his cloak and did not let go, until Colonel Fitzwilliam bade me do so.”

Elizabeth felt an inappropriate urge to laugh at this recital, but feared she would lose what little influence she had over Lydia if she stopped looking stern. Mr. Darcy was still too angry to speak; Colonel Fitzwilliam looked very much like he had when seeing the disastrous retreat from Burgos; and Mr. Wickham was beginning to look panicked.

“I am proud of you both,” said Elizabeth, to Kitty and Georgiana. “I wish you had alerted me, or Colonel Fitzwilliam, or Mr. Darcy, but I can see why you felt you could not, and you did exceedingly well given the circumstances. I am proud of you both. Lydia, I have never been less proud, for you seem not to realize that you have done anything wrong.”

“I haven’t!”

“Mr. Wickham lied to her, it is not her fault,” piped up Georgiana, with less anxiety now that Elizabeth of the Powder Wagon Bluff had praised her bravery.

“Wickham! We were neglecting you,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam. “It is a great disappointment I cannot turn you over to your commanding officer for discipline, but I am sure I can adequately console myself by turning you over to the magistrate of the parish.”

“And implicate your wife’s sister in grand larceny?” asked Mr. Wickham. His voice slightly shook, but otherwise he was as easy and charming as ever. “Perhaps they might be lenient with so young a girl and merely exile her with the other thieves to Australia.”

Elizabeth glared at Lydia. As furious as she was, she could not bear such a fate for her youngest sister.

Mr. Darcy said, in a tone of icy disdain, “Perhaps you are unaware, sir, that I have bought up all your debts in Lambton. I do not know what debts you left in Meryton and Brighton, but I have no doubt I could purchase them as well— though I daresay calling in only your debts from Lambton would be enough to land you in debtor’s prison for a considerable length of time.”

The blood visibly drained from Mr. Wickham’s face.

“Your choice, sir,” said Mr. Darcy, implacable, “Newgate or Australia.”

“Neither,” said he, rising to his feet, with an attempt at nonchalance. “I was quite serious when I said I was here because of the star-crossed. Fitzwilliam, my dear man, we have more in common than you may think.”

“We have nothing in common,” said Mr. Darcy.

“Do we not?” asked Wickham. “Why, we were intimate friends once, dear, dear Fitzwilliam. Bared hearts and wrists, did we not? I understand you better than anyone else alive. I know how secretly you have been tormenting yourself. You were always nobler than I. If you will not make a push, I have a very great mind to do so for you-—unless there is significant inducement for my silence.”

Elizabeth had not thought she could be further shocked. Was Wickham actually...? The mind rebelled. He could not possibly be proposing to violate every social taboo and reveal another person’s soulmark, could he? She looked to Colonel Fitzwilliam in the hopes she had been mistaken, but his expression mixed incredulity with outrage and his clenched hand was by his hip, where the hilt of his sword would be, had he been in uniform.

“I told you,” said Mr. Darcy, dangerously quiet, “I would not endure more on this subject.”

Mr. Wickham was still looking around the room, to see the effects of his speech, and happened to meet Elizabeth’s eye. He met her look of shocked indignation with a mocking smile, and said, “This evening in fact, I could tell—”

Mr. Darcy punched him in the face.

Mr. Wickham fell sideways to the floor.

Colonel Fitzwilliam said, “That was long overdue; well done, Darcy,” to which Elizabeth heartily assented. She supposed she ought to have at least feigned missishness or offense, but she had seen too much on the campaign, and was still too outraged by Wickham's threat.

Mr. Darcy was pale with anger, the disturbance of his mind visible in every feature, his fists still clenched by his sides. And yet he asked, in the same formal tone in which he requested the servants to remove the first course at dinner, “Mrs. Fitzwilliam, would you be so kind as to escort the ladies of the house to their rooms?”

“Of course.”

“I ought to have asked you to do so before I hit Mr. Wickham,” said Mr. Darcy stiffly. “For that, I apologize.”

Mr. Wickham wincingly began to pick himself up off the floor. The three teenage girls had been quite stunned to see Mr. Darcy, of all people, hitting someone, but were rather keen on seeing it happen again. It was with some difficulty that Elizabeth shoved them all out of the room before her.

“Is Mr. Darcy going to kill Mr. Wickham?” asked Kitty.

“What? No, no he is not,” said Elizabeth.

“Mr. Darcy may not know how,” said Lydia.

“Is Colonel Fitzwilliam going to kill Mr. Wickham?” asked Kitty.

“Has Colonel Fitzwilliam ever killed anyone?” asked Georgiana, wide-eyed.

“No one is killing anyone right this moment! Now no more until we are out of the staircase.”

She ended up ushering them all into her own chamber where she held out a hand to Lydia. With ill grace Lydia removed Elizabeth’s jewelry from her reticule. Elizabeth put it in its case and locked it in her trunk. “I shall remove the temptation,” said she, dryly. “Lydia, I do not know how to impress upon you how badly you have acted.”

She did try however. By the time Colonel Fitzwilliam knocked on the door, Kitty and Georgiana looked on Lydia with horror. ‘At least,’ thought Elizabeth, ‘I have finally shaken Kitty free from Lydia’s influence. That is one triumph.’

“Do not think this is over, Lydia,” she said, rising to unlock the door.

Colonel Fitzwilliam checked the automatic impulse to tug a lock of her loose hair, and said, “Mrs. Fitzwilliam, ladies, I bear good news: Mr. Wickham has decided his dearest wish in the world is to hunt a kangaroo and Darcy, generous soul that he is, has agreed to get him started on this life immediately. They have gone to the docks.”

Elizabeth glanced at the clock. “Good God, has it gone four already?”

“Yes, and I mean to dress and meet them there.”

Georgiana and Kitty rose and took their awed leave of him, for Elizabeth had been forced to give account of Colonel Fitzwilliam in some of the actions she had witnessed before they would allow her to finish lecturing Lydia. Lydia was less gracious, and Elizabeth said, grimly, “Oh no, Lydia, you are not going to bed. You are going to keep me company until Colonel Fitzwilliam returns.”

Lydia’s wails were meant to be heart-rending, but they were merely very loud. Elizabeth installed herself in the guest bedroom in which Lydia had been staying and by at least insisting upon Lydia repeating all her thinking of that day, got Lydia to become a little uncertain as to the likely success of her scheme.

Elizabeth at last relented when Colonel Fitzwilliam returned, and, after being assured that Colonel Fitzwilliam and Mr. Darcy had seen Mr. Wickham’s ship depart the harbor, with Mr. Wickham safely upon it, collapsed into bed with a groan.

“This was a taxing night for everyone, let alone a pregnant woman,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam, with concern.

“Women of lower stations than my own tend the fields while expecting,” Elizabeth said into her pillow. She raised herself up enough to say, “One thing puzzles me, however. Wickham’s plan seemed clear: he would ruin Georgiana, or her reputation—”

“You did not mention so to Georgiana?”

“It did not seem to have occurred to her; I did not like to inform her of the possibility.”

“Thank God!”

“But to return— marriage to Georgiana was his object, my jewels his back-up, but he seemed to have a third avenue of attack. Please tell me I misinterpreted, and that he was just speaking oddly to your cousin.”

Colonel Fitzwilliam emerged from behind the dressing screen and nudged her slightly. Elizabeth rolled over with a histrionic groan.

“Come now Lizzy, I am thinking of your comfort. I have lost count of the times you have said I make a better pillow than any other in the world.” This was true, and she was forced to admit she was much more comfortable curled up beside him, her head pillowed on his chest, and his arm curved around her lower back. Colonel Fitzwilliam continued, “Darcy was... understandably unwilling to discuss Wickham’s insinuations, but I do not think it can be anything other than what you think. Darcy and Wickham were intimate friends as children, and even at university, for a time. I think Wickham convinced Darcy to show his soulmark. If so, Wickham may be the only living person in the world who has seen it. Public exposure of Darcy’s mark was Wickham’s object.”

Elizabeth was hard put to imagine a greater outrage against another person, unless it involved physical attack. “Good God, I had not wished to believe it! As if the attempt on Georgiana was not enough! How _dare_ Wickham!”

“All his talk about the star-crossed leads me to believe that Darcy might have the family trouble. I do not know for certain. He has never shewn much interest in anybody, male or female, and when I mentioned something about my own mark in the carriage, he said that now was not the time, and I did not wish to push him on the subject.”

“He is more often critical of women.”

Colonel Fitzwilliam’s tired chuckle rumbled through her, soothingly. “I thought you and Darcy liked each other now.”

“I can like a person without being blind to their flaws. I do not think he has had your trouble. It seems to me that...” She had been thinking too much of Lydia, and too little of what Wickham and Darcy had said. She recalled something else Darcy had said once, when he had been apologizing for interfering in her match. “I think Darcy has met his soulmate, or at least, thinks he has. Wickham said enough to make me think he has also met Darcy’s match, or at least the person Darcy _thinks_ is his match, but Darcy did not, or could not say anything to this lady.”

Colonel Fitzwilliam swore under his breath. Elizabeth lazily and lightly hit him on the chest. “Sir! You speak so before the woman carrying your child?”

“I apologize my dear, but— Darcy has every advantage. If he has said nothing, then the woman must either be a member of a royal family, or married already.”

“I should think the latter, based on what Wickham said. All Wickham said— to think Wickham would have told all of us this evening what Darcy’s mark was, if Darcy had not hit him!” Elizabeth burrowed into Colonel Fitzwilliam’s side. “If I was not so tired, I would feel very sorry for both Darcys. Right now, I have not the energy for it, and must reserve all my pity for myself."

“Why?”

“I must tell my parents what Lydia has done.”

He groaned. 

“Precisely."


	9. In which there are unexpected conesquences

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note the new trigger warnings in the tags, at the end (or don't look if you don't want the spoilers they can sometimes be. I figured this was the best way to give a warning without spoiling plot points.)

The next morning, Elizabeth felt unequal to the task of riding in the carriage with her sisters; she tossed aside traveling coat for riding habit, and pressed Lord Orville once more into service. The French attack had not much altered his temper, and Elizabeth reasoned that she had been more exhausted during the retreat from Burgos than she was presently. It was safer to ride and not speak to anyone, except perhaps her husband or Mr. Darcy, then spend four hours quarreling fruitlessly with Lydia. 

It was a fine day, too, crisp and clear, and the faint chill of autumn in the air kept her awake. After the first hour of riding, Colonel Fitzwilliam came up to her and said, “You are very quiet, Lizzy.”

“Oh my dear,” said she, stifling a yawn, “I am exhausted. I could blather on to you, but you would not find it very coherent. I never understood your way of seeming perfectly alert with very little sleep.”

“It’s an old campaigner’s trick. You shall acquire it in due course.” 

She smiled but did not respond; he said, presently, “Are you worried how we shall break this to your parents?”

“Hm? Oh no, I hadn’t the energy to really think of it except as something I must improvise based on Lydia's complaints. I must confess, I was worrying over what to do if I do carry to term. I have only been on one campaign, and barely kept myself out of trouble. How should I manage to keep myself  _ and  _ an infant from harm?”

“You could always stay in England.”

Elizabeth looked at him with very real fear. “Would you insist on it?”

“Not if you dislike it,” said he, looking back at her with worry. “Which it seems you would.”

“I would mind it very much indeed. I like following the drum, and I think I might fret myself to death having to wait a week or longer to hear what actions you have seen.”

Colonel Fitzwilliam considered this and sighed. “I am not sure what is best to be done.”

“It is not,” said Elizabeth, sorting through her feelings, as she might embroidery threads, “that I do not want a child. I do. But not... not yet. Not now, at least. I could be pregnant through a campaign. If we had six months in England with a child, learning how to care for it, I should feel much better about that child’s chances of survival.” She made an exasperated noise. “But I talk as my aunt expressly warned me not to! She told me not to get my hopes up until the third month. Then I might be at liberty to plan as I like.”

“Lizzy,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam, very seriously, “we shall make it work, whatever happens. I promise you that. It will all be alright.”

“Stop being so good,” said Elizabeth. “I want to be irritated and you are making that exceedingly difficult.”

He smiled at her and said, “Shall I go plague Darcy then?”

“Do. His valet told my maid that Darcy was still awake at seven, when he went into wake him. The valet went in to wake Mr. Darcy, I mean. I do not think he slept at all. Darcy, not the valet. Bother it all! Go plague Darcy as you have threatened; I am too tired to keep talking.”

Colonel Fitzwilliam rode ahead, leaving Elizabeth alone with her crotchets and her exhaustion. She was lightly dozing in the saddle when they reached the coaching inn, where they must change carriage horses. The onrush of a mail coach departing sounded, in her sleep-addled mind, very much like the French attack on the baggage train; Lord Orville evidently thought so as well, and the sight of several express riders galloping out after the mail coach was enough to make him decide that the French were attacking again and he was not going to be on the road for it. He galloped; Elizabeth yanked on the reins to control him; he protested. Elizabeth did not consider herself thrown from her horse only because she was still holding onto the reins when she hit the ground. These she released at once and rolled out of the way, as Mrs. Kirke had bade her do should she ever be thrown again, and jumped to her feet with one of the soldier’s oaths she generally pretended not to know.

Colonel Fitzwilliam and Mr. Darcy both dismounted at once, as Elizabeth brushed the dust off her habit. 

“Wretched beast,” Elizabeth said to the horse. She seemed to have jarred herself badly in the landing and felt rather shaken. “I should sell you for glue.”

“Lizzy, are you alright?” asked Colonel Fitzwilliam, as Mr. Darcy seized her horse’s reins and calmed it. 

“I have not broken my wrists,” said Elizabeth, “so I may still sign for Jane tomorrow morning. My back aches, but nothing to signify.” She then recalled her most pressing medical concern and felt a jolt of both relief and horror intertwined. “As to— oh God, I do not know. Marietta, Captain Patrick’s wife— she— she fell off her horse at Salamanca and—”

Colonel Fitzwilliam said, when he saw she could not go on, “Shall I call a doctor?”

Elizabeth took stock of her various aches and thought she knew the answer already. "It... it should be fairly obvious. At least, it was when I was attending Mrs. Patrick. If you give me a moment at the inn, I should be able to tell myself." 

“We must all stop regardless; they must hitch new horses to the carriage.”

A quick word in the ear of the innkeeper’s wife secured her the help and expertise she needed, and Elizabeth was unsurprised by this lady’s conclusions. They were very similar to Elizabeth’s own. Elizabeth felt primarily guilty; that she had somehow willed this, or caused it to happen because she had just been talking of how inconvenient this particular pregnancy might be. She cried a little, but not as much as she felt she ought, and mostly when she had to tell Colonel Fitzwilliam she had miscarried. 

He gathered her up in his arms, as they sat side-by-side on an ugly horsehair divan in the smaller private parlor, and said, helplessly, “My dear, my very dear.”

“I am so sorry,” said Elizabeth, wracked with guilt. “You were so happy.”

“I was, and I daresay I shall be again. We have been married scarcely seven months, and were not particularly trying for children. It relieves my mind to know it will be so easy in future.”

“In a year or two, perhaps,” said Elizabeth.

“Yes, I might have enough seniority for a post permanently in London by then.” He pulled back a little to look her in the eye and say, “It will be alright, Lizzy. I promised you it would, whatever happens. Are you well enough to ride?”

“Do not force me into the carriage!”

He managed something near a laugh. “Poor Lizzy, you have suffered enough today. We could make a longer stop here, and rejoin your family later, that is all I mean. The innkeeper’s wife said you would be in some pain for the next few days.”

“No, after all the Darcys have been through, I cannot in good conscience force them to explain Lydia’s wrong doings. And I have spent the campaign riding through my usual monthly pain; this feels very like. I only need a few minutes to compose myself.” She gave herself a moment more to rest, with her head on Colonel Fitzwilliam’s shoulder. She was so used to his uniform, it felt odd not to feel the scratch of gold braid against her temples. “I am afraid it is my fault.”

“How could it be? You were doing a very fine job pulling Lord Orville back under your control—”

“I was not attending when the mail coach was rolling out.”

“He would have panicked either way. My own horse was restive at the noise. You might as well say I was at fault for failing to get you a new horse when we reached London, or for telling you I had no idea what to do if you did have the child. If I blamed myself for every injury I have ever received, I would never have the courage to go back into battle.” After a moment, he said, “Lizzy, my dear, please do not think  _ I  _ blame you.”

She raised her head and forced a smile, “it is ridiculous but I almost feared you might.”

“Never.” He stroked her dusty curls and said, “To tell you the truth, as much as I should like a family, I have been blind to how complicated it will be to actually have one.”

Elizabeth managed to laugh through the last traces of her tears. “You know, Darcy once told me that you misrepresented your flaws to me. It is not that you fail to take responsibility for mistakes, it is that you never notice the severity of a problem until it has blown up in your face.” 

To her relief, Colonel Fitzwilliam merely smiled and said, “It is a pity Darcy should know me better than myself. Well, and here I am forewarned, Mrs. Fitzwilliam: it will be a problem for us to begin a family so early into our marriage. Does that displease you?”

Elizabeth considered this. “No. I am a little relieved, I must confess, to have that out in the open, and acknowledged. Mrs. Kirke and her husband purposefully have no children because of the logistical difficulties. Do you have a handkerchief?”  

“There is my true flaw,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam, patting his pockets. “Never having a handkerchief. The innkeeper’s wife said she would procure some hot water and clean clouts for you; I shall add a handkerchief to the order. Will a quarter of an hour suffice for all that?  I shall go up to Darcy and—”

They both paused and looked at each other, willing the other not to laugh. Colonel Fitzwilliam broke first, and Elizabeth followed. 

“Oh my God,” gasped Elizabeth, breathless with laughter. “You left Darcy with three teenage girls? All by himself?”

Colonel Fitzwilliam ran a hand over his face, to try and wipe the smile off his face. “I confess, I did. I did not realize I had done so until this moment.”

“I cannot imagine it!”

“It is poor recompense for all he did last evening,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam, managing to at least look serious. “I shall go rescue him.” He paused long enough to kiss her forehead and say, “Te amo, my dear.”

“I love you too,” said Elizabeth, still laughing, “and will much more if you mark Darcy's expression and tell me of it later!”

 

***

 

When Elizabeth had arranged clouts and petticoats, washed her face, and drunk a posset the innkeeper’s wife kindly urged upon her, she went up to the larger private parlor to see Mr. Darcy had taken up his usual post by the window. He stared determinedly at the dusty drive, as if trying to commit it to memory.

Colonel Fitzwilliam turned at her entrance and said, with a trace of anxiety still, “All well, Mrs. Fitzwilliam?”

“Yes, I am sorry to have detained you all.”

Kitty had sprung up and run to her, perhaps not with the greatest propriety with with a very touching affection, and unfortunately seized her around the waist. Elizabeth exaggerated her surprised ‘oof’ and, hugging Kitty tightly, said, “My word, Kitty, you are faster than a French hussar.”

“Colonel Fitzwilliam said you’d fallen from your horse,” said Kitty. “Are you alright? You are not injured?”

Kitty had abandoned her bonnet and spencer on the table; Elizabeth found herself perilously close to tears and hid it by pressing a kiss to Kitty’s hair. “I tore my hem,” she said in a stage-whisper, so that Georgiana, who had also risen, but hung back, could hear too. “An honorable casualty against the mailcoach, do you not think?”

Georgiana smiled and Kitty giggled; Lydia, who was sulking by the fire, pretended not to be listening and turned up her nose. 

“You said you lost your hat during the retreat from Burgos, did you not?” asked Georgiana. “I think you wrote that.”

“I did! What an excellent memory you have.” Elizabeth was glad to see Georgiana and Kitty’s spirits were bolstered rather than depressed by the events of the previous evening, and further, that they were using the worst weapon one teenaged girl could wield against another: social ostracization. They kept their backs to Lydia as they engaged Elizabeth in another retelling of the Powder Wagon Incident, which was apparently a more popular story with them than even  _ Evelina  _ had been for Elizabeth and Jane. Elizabeth kept one arm around Kitty’s waist and held out the other for Georgiana, who was both surprised and pleased by this embrace. 

“But now,” said Elizabeth, when she had finished her tale, “you have seen I am well, and heard how I have endured much worse than the mailcoach! Shall we depart?”

Elizabeth was pleased to see— perhaps more out of spite than anything else— that Kitty and Georgiana ignored Lydia when going into the coach and continued to do so for the rest of the ride.

“There is nothing quite so vicious as a teenage girl,” said Elizabeth, to Colonel Fitzwilliam. “Having been one myself, I ought to know.” 

Darcy was riding by them and turned at this, saying, “I am surprised at how well Georgiana has taken... these events.” 

“Are you? I am not, she has been allowed to be active.”

Colonel Fitzwilliam said, “I think it helps she and Miss Catherine are now such fast friends.”

“One cannot successfully capture and send a rake to Australia and remain only indifferent acquaintances,” said Elizabeth. “I am glad of such increase in intimacy between them. Kitty always wants someone to follow, and I would much rather she follow Georgiana than Lydia.”

Colonel Fitzwilliam added, “And Georgiana, I think, has always wanted a particular friend her own age.”

Darcy inclined his head.

Elizabeth looked askance at him. The incipient lines around mouth and eyes had turned graven, and he seemed only to be keeping himself upright and moving through strength of will alone. “Mr. Darcy, did you get any rest at all? We can easily change our route to stop first at Netherfield.”

“I did not, but there is no need to alter our course,” said Darcy. “Some explanation must be offered to your father, why three of his daughters, staying in my house, under my protection, had forced upon them, in the middle of the night, the company of the worst kind of man.”

Elizabeth, a little resenting being lumped in with Kitty and Lydia said, “Mr. Darcy, I understand your scruples, but really, my husband and I can explain what happened. My father will not require  _ you personally  _ to account for Mr. Wickham’s visit.”

“You push yourself too much,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam, gently. “You need not always be doing everything yourself, and I daresay you had the most difficult night of all of us.”

Mr. Darcy looked particularly at Elizabeth as he said, stiffly, with weariness creeping in around the edges, “The fault is mine and so must the remedy be. I will get no peace until I have done so.”

Elizabeth well remembered the folded letter, and the talk in the wilderness. She exchanged a glance with Colonel Fitzwilliam, and tried to convey, through expression alone, ‘You must allow him this.’

“If you feel you must,” Colonel Fitzwilliam began.

“I do,” said Mr. Darcy, and spurred on his horse so that he rode a ways before them. 

 

***

 

Great was Mrs. Bennet’s joy in exclaiming, before the housekeeper, Mrs. Hill, the two housemaids, the groom, and the manservant, “And here is Mrs. Fitzwilliam and the dear colonel! Oh my dear, dear son-in-law, welcome to Longbourn!”

Colonel Fitzwilliam dutifully let himself be kissed and fussed over before reaching up to help Elizabeth down. Elizabeth could not quite help her wince, nor he his anxious look and continued hold upon her. Mrs. Bennet did not notice, nor Jane nor Mary, for they were all occupied in Kitty, Lydia, and Georgiana spilling out of the carriage, but Mr. Bennet did, and looked at them in concern. But there was no time to say anything; the Gardiners and their children came spilling out of the house in response, and all was noise and confusion. 

There seemed to be endless difficulty getting inside once again. Elizabeth was reassuring her husband in a low voice, that she was as well as could be expected, when her father appeared before her and offered his arm. “Mrs. Fitzwilliam, I am afraid you are the highest ranking lady present; I must lead you in.”

Elizabeth had entirely forgotten this; she had been waiting, with some impatience, for Jane to lead the way. She took her father’s arm with a smile and said, “Papa, I ought to be very cross with you. Did you not promise to come visit whenever I was in London?”

“For the sight of Lady Catherine,” said he, “which you could not deliver. After all the talk of lace I was forced to have over your wedding clothes, can you really blame me for failing to sit through yet more talk for Jane’s?” He covered her hand with his own as he lead her into the house. “I almost thanked you for being in such haste to marry. I had only two or three days of it, all told, before your mother could be distracted by the marriage settlements.”

“Yes, Lydia was informing me it was Mama’s favorite topic.” She waited only until Mrs. Hill had relieved her of her hat and gloves to say, in a low voice, “Papa, we need to talk privately about Lydia. Last night she went absolutely beyond the pale.”

“I suppose she followed through on her threat to make her dress cling by dampening her petticoats, as I am told is all the fashion in London. I venture a guess that handkerchiefs, tissanes, and lozenges will be the must have accoutrements shortly thereafter.”

Elizabeth cupped her hand around his ear and whispered a much abbreviated version of events. At last her father was shocked. He stared at her in strained incredulity, and would have continued so if Mr. Darcy had not stood next to him and cleared his throat. 

“Mr. Darcy,” said Mr. Bennet, turning to him. “I, ah, I understand I owe you some apology for foisting upon you my two youngest. Will you come into the bookroom with me, sir? Lizzy, go rescue your husband. Bring Kitty and Lydia, if you can find them.”

“My sister, also,” said Mr. Darcy. 

“Pray make up some excuse to your mother,” said Mr. Bennet. “I hate to deprive her of all her victims at once, but it must be done.”

“Have you any objection to my telling her merely that Lydia’s behavior yesterday was unconscionable?”

“No, no, she will interpret it as I did, at first. It has been impressed upon her that your new relations do not look kindly upon even slight improprieties.”

Elizabeth did not need to give much excuse; even Mrs. Bennet had picked up that Kitty and Georgiana were refusing to talk to Lydia, and was now asking Colonel Fitzwilliam, in a low voice, why the three youngest of the party had quarrelled. 

“That is a matter Papa wishes particularly to discuss with Colonel Fitzwilliam,” said Elizabeth. She stooped to kiss her mother and said, “I am sorry Mama, but I must take them all into the bookroom to explain what has happened; I shall return your guests to you anon.”

Mrs. Bennet was baffled, but relieved her anxiety by talking in a loud voice to Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner that Lydia’s high spirits and tragic circumstances occasionally led her to excess.

“Excess, you call it?” muttered Elizabeth, shutting the door to the sitting room firmly behind it. “Oh yes, multiple felonies are nothing but excess!”

Colonel Fitzwilliam looked askance at her. “Sarcasm this early? Are you picking up my bad habits again, my dear?”

“I am told that is very common in marriage. The next thing we know, you shall go about completely covered in mud.”

“Aye, petticoats three inches deep,” said he, solemnly. 

Elizabeth lightly swatted him on the shoulder.

The mood of the bookroom was very grim. Mr. Darcy had given his account of events while Elizabeth was gathering up the others, and Mr. Bennet, sitting with his elbows upon his desk and his hands to his temples, looked far older than Elizabeth had ever seen him. 

“Lydia,” said he, when Elizabeth and Colonel Fitzwilliam had shut and locked the door behind them. “I hesitate to ask this, for I truly fear the answer, but what  _ were  _ you thinking?”

Lydia, ensconced in one of the chairs facing the desk said, determinedly, “I was thinking I must make a push, for no one else will.”

“And your idea of making a push is to steal one sister’s jewelry and force the other to be an accomplice not just to this crime, but another: assisting a stranger to break into the home of your host. Ah, but there your efforts do not end! Already guilty of grand larceny and breaking and entering, you would have added to this the sale of stolen property, a note admitting your guilt, and running away from home. How, Lydia, is this making a push?”

Phrased like this, Lydia had no response.

Mr. Bennet turned to Kitty and Georgiana, who sat once more shoulder to shoulder on a divan. “Miss Darcy, I very sincerely beg  _ your  _ pardon, as I have begged your brother’s. The offence my family has given yours is great indeed.”

Georgiana looked very startled to be addressed and managed a hesitant, “But it— it was not Miss Lydia’s fault, sir, Mr. Wickham lied to her. And Kitty— Miss Catherine, that is— she came up with the plan to stop him and she helped me.”

“She helped you?”

Mr. Darcy had evidently given a shorter account than even Elizabeth; Kitty eagerly gave hers, which was long, included a useless digression on the merits of parasols versus fireplace pokers while threatening rakes, and finished with Mr. Wickham’s probable death at sea, before ever reaching Australia. Sharks entered into this more than expected. 

“Lizzy,” said Mr. Bennet, turning to where she and Colonel Fitzwilliam sat in the window seat, “when you came in, you mentioned that Kitty and Miss Darcy had been forced to hold off Mr. Wickham until you and Colonel Fitzwilliam came down to deal with him, but I think you left out one or two crucial details.”

“The fireplace poker,” said Kitty, triumphant. “Georgiana— Miss Darcy, that is— she thought the parasol, but I thought—”

“Yes, your views on fireplace pokers have been explained in great detail,” said Mr. Bennet. “Miss Darcy, it is natural you wish to defend Lydia, but she must bear some responsibility for last evening’s events. Lydia, apologize to Miss Darcy.”

Lydia glared at him. “But no harm came to anyone and I was only trying to help her, for Mr. Wickham said he was her soulmate.”

“Mr. Wickham,” said Mr. Darcy, unexpectedly, “is no one’s soulmate but his own. He is certainly not my sister’s.”

“Well then I am sorry for that,” said Lydia indignantly, “but I was only trying to help everyone.”

“You were only kept from harming everyone, including yourself, because Kitty thought to confide in Miss Darcy,” said Mr. Bennet. “And that was not an apology. Try again.”

Lydia said, stiffly, “I am sorry, Miss Darcy.”

“For?”

“For trying to help—”

“Try again.” 

Mr. Bennet kept this up until Lydia was red-faced, but at last admitting her wrongs. When she had apologized to everyone, Mr. Bennet said, “You owe myself and your mother another apology, for bringing such discredit upon our family, but that, I think, is too long to be spoken aloud. You will go up to your room and write it out. I will require you to do it over again if I find any misspellings.”

Lydia jumped to her feet. “You are monstrous unfair!”

“Yes, a grammatical tyrant,” he agreed. “There is no room in my heart for variant spellings. Kitty, Lizzy, pray escort your sister up to her room and Miss Darcy to the sitting room. I rely on you Kitty, not to tell your mother, sisters, aunts, cousins, servants, and any traveling salesmen about this until I have finished talking to Mr. Darcy and Colonel Fitzwilliam. Lizzy, after you have stationed one of the maids at Lydia’s door, will you come back?”

This was speedily accomplished. Elizabeth was delayed a little by Mrs. Bennet and the Gardiners, but they were contented with a grim, “Lydia is writing out some apologies and will not be down again today.” Jane looked worried at this; Elizabeth signaled that they would speak later. 

Elizabeth gave herself a moment to lean against the wall in the hallway, her arms around her midsection, so that she might grimace as she liked. ‘Really,’ she thought, ‘this is worse than what I have to deal with every month. I wonder how women of lower classes can bear this while harvesting grain or mixing the bread.’

When she returned, Mr. Bennet was saying to Mr. Darcy, “Really sir, you must demand some reparation of me. Significant harm could have befallen your sister due to the actions of my daughter.”

“Due to the actions of your other two daughters, no harm did,” said Mr. Darcy. “It was my pride that caused this; my disinclination to bare my private affairs to the world. No one but myself, Colonel and Mrs. Fitzwilliam, and my cousin Lady Stornoway, had any idea Mr. Wickham had tried to seduce my sister once before. No one outside my family circle knew of all his dealings with me. Had he succeeded in all his objects last night, his revenges against me would be great indeed— and my sister and Miss Lydia the collateral damage.”

“I shall say it again: you take too much on yourself.” Colonel Fitzwilliam had ceded his chair to Elizabeth, and, seeing her shift uncomfortably in it, paused to pick up a small pillow from the divan and wedge it behind her back. She smiled her thanks at him and he continued, “Darcy, it is not your fault Wickham broke into your house. As soon as you were made aware of his presence, you acted with admirable rapidity. Indeed, I cannot think of a tidier end to the whole affair.” 

“At least allow me to buy up Mr. Wickham’s debts in Meryton,” said Mr. Bennet. 

Mr. Darcy protested this, and Mr. Bennet was not inclined to push him when Mr. Darcy said, “Sir, argument is fruitless. Your daughter Elizabeth is now my cousin. She is family and, by extension, so are you and the rest of your daughters. You must allow me to protect my family from the results of my own folly.”

Elizabeth’s eyebrows shot up at this, but when she looked up at her husband, Colonel Fitzwilliam was smiling. It occurred to her suddenly that Darcy’s disapproval of her had injured Colonel Fitzwilliam almost more than herself. This show of total acceptance had been what Colonel Fitzwilliam had needed to see to be easy with Darcy once again, though it was not something the colonel would ever consciously realize, and, even if he did, it was not something he would ever dream of demanding. 

“If you insist on keeping all the blame, I shall not fight you for it,” said Mr. Bennet, offering Darcy his hand. 

Darcy rose and shook it. 

“I suppose you are eager to depart for Netherfield; I shall ask for your carriage to be brought ‘round and shall send over your horse tomorrow. I understand, given the circumstances, that you might not wish to dine with us after the wedding breakfast, but you and your sister would be most welcome.”

Darcy bowed and took his leave. 

Elizabeth wincingly rose to see him and Miss Darcy off, but Colonel Fitzwilliam said, with some concern, “Will you not rest, my dear? I am sure you and your father will wish to catch up; I can give Miss Darcy your regards on your behalf.”

“Thank you,” said Elizabeth, dropping gratefully back into her chair.

Mr. Bennet noted this with concern, and, when the Darcys were gone said, “Out with it Lizzy. Colonel Fitzwilliam has been treating you as if any second you will break in two, and I think too highly of his good sense to conclude he has decided you are made of glass instead of flesh and bone. What is wrong?”

“Must there be something other than Lydia’s attempt to ruin my husband’s ward and to end up an exile?” Mr. Bennet had only to look at her for Elizabeth to confess her tiredness, her inattention to the road, and, in veiled terms, the consequences of her fall. Her father at once came around his desk and sat next to her. 

“Lizzy,” said he, gently, taking her hand in his, “do not look so cast down. It is very common for a woman not to carry to term. Your mother seldom did, and still managed to bear five living daughters. I am not afraid I shall never have grandchildren. It is of course painful, because it is the first time it has happened to you, but put it out of your mind as soon as you can.” He kissed her forehead. “Consider your mother’s reaction to your confinement, and feel blessed.”

Elizabeth managed a smile. 

“And let Jane do something before you,” said he, still trying to cheer her. “You have stolen a march on her, marrying before her. Let her provide the first grandchild. She will be better able to bear your mother’s delight.”

“I shall do my poor best.” She did not like to dwell long on this subject, and said, “Papa, I hate to press, but what do you think ought to be done with Lydia? I tried to make her understand how badly she had behaved, but....”

Her father sighed and leaned back in his chair, briefly closing his eyes. “That, my Lizzy, is a problem to which I have no easy answer. I must think on it, for I really fear that at sixteen Lydia’s character is now set. I was used to think her silly, but in a manner that would harm only herself. At the very least, this has proved Kitty is not quite so useless as we always feared.”

“Kitty feels as she ought.”

“Yes.” Mr. Bennet took off his glasses and rubbed his forehead, in between his eyebrows. “Lydia is still, I think, writing out her apologies. I daresay it will take her all day and most of the evening to produce a fair copy. I hope that will teach her a lesson.”

“I am not certain it shall.”

Mr. Bennet wearily rose and took out his account book. “Then let us see how soon we may send her to China. We shall get no peace until we do.” 

Elizabeth argued that this was tantamount to rewarding such behavior, and provided the figures she herself had scouted out. “Really, Papa, something else must be done. She must be checked....” Elizabeth trailed off.

“I think you have an idea.”

“I do,” said Elizabeth, with a brilliant smile. “You know, Papa, Colonel Fitzwilliam’s aunt Catherine  _ loves  _ to be of use.”

“So she does,” said Mr. Bennet, fighting a smile, “but how she could be convinced to take on Lydia?”

“That I can leave to my husband. A vague mention of Lydia needing polish, lacking accomplishments, and behaving badly will, I think, be enough to have Lady Catherine begin to think of taking Lydia on as her next project. Lady Catherine is already appalled Lydia does not speak French. You would not object to Lydia having a long visit to Rosings Park, come the spring?”

“I should welcome it with far more alacrity than I ever welcomed a single young man of large fortune into the neighborhood. The only qualm I have is in whether or not Lydia will stick the soup spoons in her apron pockets.”

“I do not worry about that; I worry more that she will tell everything to Lady Catherine, when we have been at such pains to keep from her—” Elizabeth caught herself from speaking of Georgiana’s time at Ramsgate “—well, everything, really. I do not know if Lady Catherine even knows of my adventure with the powder wagons, and I do not mean to tell her if not.”

“I cannot imagine Lady Catherine will approve of your cleverness. Indeed, I hope she does not. I shall be very disappointed to hear she has the sense to recognize it as such.” Mr. Bennet paused and said, “How now to keep Lydia quiet, if shame will not? Grim questions. Never have philosophers asked of themselves, ‘what shall I do, now my sixteen-year-old daughter has less shame than Alcibiades when he abandoned Socrates for Sparta?’ If she cannot be taught...."

An idea occurred. “Perhaps you might begin to teach her something else? Now Jane and I are gone, there ought to be some money to bring in a tutor to teach Lydia Cantonese and Mandarin. I think he or she must live here at Longbourn so that Lydia is at her book all day every day."

Mr. Bennet’s lips twitched. “Let the punishment fit the crime, eh Lizzy? And it seems like a solution that will cause me very little inconvenience. Indeed, it might make it much easier to keep to my book room without disturbance. Very well, I applaud your scheme. We shall apply it at once.”

“It does concern me as well that Lydia has no notion of money or the actual cost of things. She actually thought my diamonds would be enough to pay for passage to China!” She shook her head. “It might do more harm than good, but perhaps you might consider teaching Lydia to help do the accounts and run the household? I know Mary took care of the house when Jane was in the Lake Country, and Kitty the stillroom, and I think Lydia’s idleness then was perhaps to blame for some of her petulance. If you had her work with Mary—  _ not  _ with Kitty— to learn how to work within a budget, it might improve her mind enough to at least not commit felonies that will not achieve her objects.”

“She will hate it.”

“Of course; it is a punishment.”

Elizabeth was a little concerned her father would not agree to this part of her plan, as it would require some work on his part, but Mr. Bennet sighed and said, “It must be done. We will make Lydia too tired to come up with further schemes, and too cross over her lessons to complain about this most recent escapade. Six months of immersive Chinese language instruction and household management will hopefully cause her to complain to Lady Catherine about her lessons, rather than Mr. Wickham and his efforts. But there still remains the more difficult question of what we shall tell your mother. If it is the truth, the whole neighborhood will hear of it.”

“Kitty will keep quiet if I ask her, and Miss Darcy will hardly like for Mr. Wickham’s interest in her—or rather her dowry—to be public knowledge. Perhaps it will suffice to say that Lydia behaved so badly towards her hosts it cannot be spoken of. I daresay our neighborhood will not guess the truth.”

“No, that would be expecting too much intelligence from our neighbors.” A serious mood was upon him, which was rare; he looked at her and said, simply, “I have missed these chats of ours, Lizzy. When Jane is gone, I do not expect to hear two words of sense spoken together in the course of an entire day.”

“Colonel Fitzwilliam and I can come again for Christmas, if you can find the room; his father means to visit his youngest daughter in Denmark, as she is expecting her first child around that time, and Lord and Lady Stornoway will not demand we stay with them. After that— you know, you quite terrified my father-in-law when negotiating the marriage settlements. He would host you in London any time you wish.”

“I may just avail myself of that,” said Mr. Bennet, smiling again. “It is very pleasant to be toad-eaten by an earl. That pleasure aside, you are now... what, a seven month married? Is it still as pleasant now as you insisted to me it would be, when you were begging my permission in April?”

Elizabeth laughed. “Yes! I am very happy to be married. I am as much in love as I was before, though perhaps it is a little less giddy and a little more of a settled contentment. My esteem for him and his for me have only increased. Perhaps it is improper in me, but I like following the drum, even if that liking was sorely tried in the retreat from Burgos. Indeed, I have no reason to complain. And when I complain without reason Colonel Fitzwilliam either finds it amusing, or thinks I am in earnest and acts upon it. He is all I could need in a partner.”

“I am glad to hear it. I could not bear to be continually parting with you, Lizzy, for anyone less worthy.” He stood and added,  “You had better complain to your husband that Lydia needs Lady Catherine’s guidance. Even if it does not improve Lydia, it will at least amuse the rest of us.”

 

***

 

When they had blown out the candle for the evening, Elizabeth said, “It feels so strange to be in Longbourn, sharing a bed with someone who is not Jane.”

Colonel Fitzwilliam replied, “I am sorry I am not as pretty as your usual bedfellow, but you ought to have thought of that before marrying a soldier. We rough fellows must bear the evidence  of our trade.”

“Ridiculous man! You, rough? You thought eight thousand a year was not enough to live on, and sulked for three days when I bought insufficiently fine muslin to make your shirts.” He had an arm around her waist; Elizabeth idly traced the faint scars from the exploded canon on his forearm, as if connecting constellations on a star map. 

He grumbled at this, but it turned soon into a yawn. “God Lizzy, I don’t know if I have ever passed a more complicated twenty-four hours off of a battlefield. I am not sure I can keep awake longer; it seems a decade since Wickham tried to bolt from the docks.”

“Did he try to fight you?”

Colonel Fitzwilliam snorted, sending one of Elizabeth’s loose curls fluttering over her cheek. “Not well, and not for long. Mr. Wickham hardly compares Marshal Soult when it comes to evasive maneuvers. Sleep well, my dear, and in the knowledge that Mr. Wickham has been thoroughly routed.” 

She had been exhausted all day, but now that she was free to sleep, she could not. Eventually she lifted her husband’s arm off and said, “Richard, would you mind dreadfully if I went to Jane?”

“I see how it is,” he said, grumpily, “you have got what you wanted from me and are now in a great haste to be gone! You lure in a simple soldier to get a warm bed and then flee as soon as you have seized his hot water bottle.”

“Richard,” she protested, laughing. 

“No, go ahead, I shall be asleep again presently.” He remained awake enough to hand the hot water bottle to her and bid her, with real anxiety, to wake him if she felt herself in worse pain than that morning.

They had retired earlier than the rest of the party; Jane was still undressing when Elizabeth knocked on the door to Jane’s room. 

Sally looked quite surprised, but Jane jumped from her dressing table and said, “Lizzy! Oh I was hoping you would come and see me. Sally, you may go. Mrs. Fitzwilliam can assist me.” 

They talked of Jane’s travels and Elizabeth’s, of their mother’s advice and enthusiasms, their various wedding clothes, Jane’s wedding gown of jaconet muslin with white work at the hems and sleeves, of household responsibilities, and obligations to in-laws and other relations. Elizabeth finished braiding Jane’s hair and then settled back against the headboard, clutching tight her hot water bottle. “Oh Jane, why must life get more complicated as we get older? It has been madness ever since I am come back from Portugal.”

“I did not think being married, or nearly so, would result in so constant a stream of responsibilities,” Jane agreed. She pinned in place the last curl paper and settled back next to Elizabeth. “I meant to tell you earlier—Mr. Bingley cannot purchase Netherfield; he sent me a note about it before you arrived this morning. I think. It was somewhat difficult to read his note. He writes more in blots when he is excited. But he has been making inquiries since we were engaged, and it appears the owner is only interested in letting it. There is some thought of our moving to the north.”

Elizabeth felt a faint frisson of disappointment. She could not think of Hertfordshire without Jane. “Did you so fall in love with the Lake Country?”

“I enjoyed it very much, but it is more that Mr. Bingley and his sisters grew up in the north of England and I think are happiest in that countryside. His sisters are eager for him to purchase an estate; it was the wish of their father.” 

Elizabeth held her tongue about the wishes of Miss Bingley and Mrs. Hurst, and how they may or may not have aligned with their late father’s, or even their brother’s, and asked only, “Do you have some notion of the county?”

“Possibly Derbyshire. Mr. Darcy’s estate is there, and he knows of a property not thirty miles distant from his own that may be suitable. I admit, I have encouraged the idea, for I know Colonel Fitzwilliam and Mr. Darcy are such good friends you will often be staying at Pemberley.”

“That is very true; and I am eager to promote the friendship between Georgiana and Kitty.” She put her arm around Jane’s waist and leaned her head on her shoulder with a sigh. “Oh Jane, it is a relief to think I will never be too far distant from you. It was very hard, the first few weeks in Spain, having no Jane to comfort me, and no hope of having one again until the autumn!”

Jane leaned her cheek against the top of Elizabeth’s head. “Oh Lizzy, it was so odd being here without you. Papa felt it exceedingly. And—”

“If you mention Lydia, I shall cease to feel guilty and maudlin.”

“I shall not then, and say only that it is... perhaps odd of me, but I did not much think, until Papa and Uncle Phillips were going over the marriage settlements for me, that I should have children. Indeed, I might have them soon. How that shall alter everything! Have you and the Colonel begun to think of it?”

“A little.” Elizabeth, surprised that she could so say without feeling very upset, added, “we have come close, but only by a month, and no longer. It is not as much a disappointment as you might think; I am no Eleanor of Aquitaine, to charge into battle with a baby at my breast.”

“Oh Lizzy,” said Jane.

“Do not cry, Jane! My aunt Gardiner says it is very common. I daresay you will know that soon enough yourself.”

Jane attempted not to cry, and changed the subject. “Lizzy— are you quite at liberty to tell me what offense Lydia has given Miss Darcy? I was very surprised Lydia was not allowed to come down to dinner. I cannot remember the last time that happened. That is— it is often threatened, but Mama generally forgives Lydia well before it is time to dress and go down.”

Elizabeth was glad of this, and was quite right in thinking that talking of Lydia would keep her from being maudlin. Anger drove out any lingering melancholy, and by the time she had concluded with Colonel Fitzwilliam’s careful letter to Lady Catherine, she was in much better spirits.

Jane did not believe all at first, for she attributed her own feelings to everyone around her, and exclaimed many times, “But how could they be so desperate?”

“I cannot speak for Wickham, but I will quiz Richard about it tomorrow if you like. Lydia I know was not desperate, merely willful and spoilt.”

Jane shook her head. “No, no, Lydia cannot be so wholly blind to what is right. I think— oh perhaps I have neglected her too much. I was away so much of the year with our aunt and uncle.”

“Is this a subtle scold to me for being in Spain?”

“Oh, Lizzy, no! How can you think that?”

“Then do not scold yourself for being in London and the Lake District. We cannot help being older, and liking and needing to travel. And I beg your pardon, but I cannot think as well of Lydia’s character as you do. You did not see Kitty and Georgiana— in their dressing gowns, no less!— forced to hold off Mr. Wickham with a fireplace poker! I have never been more shocked, even while on campaign. Mary, you might argue, is equally neglected, but you do not see her committing felonies.”  

“I have been thinking that I ought to do something for Mary. Of course, Mama shall need Mary to sit with her, and I think Mary will find that more agreeable if Lydia is not there to tease her. I think she might be happier in a profession, than in trying to find a match. I am not sure she could.”  

Elizabeth considered this. It was no evil to never marry, as long as one was sufficiently supported by one of the few acceptable careers to women— mostly handling children or dead things— or by one’s family. The particular evil of the Bennet family’s situation had always been that, without Longbourn, they would not be able to live in the manner their class demanded. “I suppose if she shewed her mark to the British Museum, there might be a place for her. She does study enough for it. Whether or not she has learnt enough from it is a matter for the curators to decide.”

“Lizzy!”

“I am sorry, Jane. Mary is very studious. I am sure she could learn whatever they require of her.”

Jane could not long be kept from the events of the previous evening and soon realized something very shocking, “Oh no, Kitty in her dressing gown— in front of Mr. Darcy!”

“Oh Lord, I was too— with my hair down, no less.” Elizabeth grimaced. “I am forever embarrassing myself before Mr. Darcy. Though I daresay he didn’t notice; Mr. Wickham was threatening the most horrible things. He actually threatened to reveal Mr. Darcy’s mark.”

Jane actually gasped. “No!”

“It seems so unthinkable I almost did not notice it myself, until Richard pointed it out.”

“This is too distressing. I cannot believe— oh, that is impossible! There must have been some misunderstanding.”

“There can be none. Wickham said that unless there was significant inducement for his silence, that evening he would tell.”

Jane was so distressed she began to cry; Elizabeth held her and said, “Oh Jane, I did not mean to upset you so the day before your wedding! Nothing can ever diminish your beauty of course, not even tears, but I should not like to in any way disturb your equanimity.”

“No, I am merely very sorry for Mr. Darcy,” said Jane, thickly. “After all that passed with his sister, to now have his childhood friend, the only person he trusted to see his mark, so turn upon him, to threaten him with such humiliation! Oh poor Mr. Darcy!” She blew her nose— Elizabeth reflected, amused, that even Jane could not blow her nose prettily— and continued on, “And, oh Lizzy, you must not even tell Colonel Fitzwilliam, but Mr. Darcy has had a very hard time of it of late. Mr. Bingley does not know the whole of the story, for I do not think Mr. Darcy could easily tell even part of it, but Mr. Darcy came to the conclusion that he will not probably ever marry. He met his soulmate, and she is married to someone else.”

“Richard and I thought so, from one of Mr. Wickham’s insinuations.” Elizabeth cast her mind back to April and tried to recollect what exactly Darcy had said, but recalled instead her conversation with her husband earlier that morning. “You know, with all of Mr. Darcy’s early objections to our family— I think the lady must be of greater rank even than himself. There was a vehemence to his protestations which I think can only come to an argument one must repeat to oneself in the hopes of eventually believing it. But the only women I have never heard him disparage are his sister, his late mother, and—” She paused. “Good God, it cannot be Lady Stornoway?”

“Your sister-in-law?” asked Jane. “Oh, if it is— poor Mr. Darcy! He has suffered for so long!”

“I do not think Lady Stornoway precisely loves her husband,” said Elizabeth, “which makes it the more probable, and makes me quite understand why Darcy was so insistent the ‘Fitzwilliam’ on my wrist might not mean Richard. Perhaps the one on Marjorie’s really refers to ‘Fitzwilliam Darcy’ and not ‘Julian Fitzwilliam, viscount Stornoway’? But I run ahead of myself, I suppose. I do not know what Marjorie’s wrist says— but Wickham did say it must be very difficult for Mr. Darcy, to see his soulmate bearing another man’s children— oh, what an impossible situation for everyone.”

They were up a half-hour longer trying to determine whether or not this was possible. Jane rather hoped not, for it would mean that Lady Stornoway, who had been so kind and so charming, did not have a happy marriage, and it meant that Mr. Darcy would have been suffering for at least eight years. Elizabeth was inclined to think herself correct, but was still hesitant in her judgement, having been so recently and so dramatically wrong about Mr. Darcy before. But, as interesting a tragedy as this would have been, it could not keep them up all evening, and they were both very soon asleep.

 

***

 

As Elizabeth expected, Miss Bingley proved one of the more irritating aspects to Jane’s wedding. She met Elizabeth just as Colonel Fitzwilliam was helping her down from the coach into the churchyard, and said, “Ah, dear Eliza! I may call you such, now we are to be sisters.”

“If you like,” said Elizabeth, privately vowing to never address Caroline Bingley by any proper noun what-so-ever. 

Colonel Fitzwilliam caught onto her displeasure and, hiding a grin, squeezed her hand before tucking it into the crook of his arm. Elizabeth smiled up at him with an answering twinkle before turning back to Miss Bingley. “May I present to you my husband, Colonel Fitzwilliam?”

“And dear Darcy’s cousin, I am told,” said Miss Bingley. “It is a pleasure Colonel Fitzwilliam, I assure you.” 

Miss Bingley quickly ignored Elizabeth to talk to Colonel Fitzwilliam, or rather, to ask, with vague allusions, about Mr. Darcy’s marital state. Colonel Fitzwilliam blandly feigned total ignorance as to her real line of questioning, and responded with news of Darcy’s reading habits or fencing hobby, and a repeated assurance that as he and Mrs. Fitzwilliam had been in Spain, fighting the French, they had had little opportunity to observe Darcy’s social calendar.

As Jane still had not made it into the church, having been stopped by rather too many people eager to wish her joy, or to admire her white work, Miss Bingley said, brightly, “Dear colonel, do let me steal dear Eliza for just a moment. We ladies must have our little confidences.”

Elizabeth could not think of any confidence she would have liked to share with Caroline Bingley, but was, despite herself, quite fascinated by the idea  _ Caroline Bingley  _ had one to share with her. When Colonel Fitzwilliam would have protested, she squeezed his arm.

He let her go reluctantly— his concern over her health was still very great, and he seemed to think that she would collapse in a pool of blood if he was not constantly attending her— but was perfectly gracious in his response. He turned to speak with Sir William Lucas, who had bounded up eagerly for an introduction, and a nice chat about St. James’s Court. As Colonel Fitzwilliam was more frequently at Whitehall than St. James’s, that knight was doomed to disappointment, but he bore it tolerably enough, and even took some pleasure in getting to describe St. James’s Court to the son of an earl.

When they were a little ways apart from the crowd, Miss Bingley said, “Eliza, my dear, you know, it quite shocked me when Charles told me— in the middle of Lady Stornoway’s ball no less— that you were engaged to be married to Colonel Fitzwilliam!”

“Did it?” asked Elizabeth, politely. “I thought you were unacquainted with my husband; I am sorry to have introduced you if so.”

Miss Bingley tittered politely. “No, I knew him only by report. Mr. Darcy told me of his cousin’s cheerful disposition.”

Elizabeth thought this a stretch from how her husband tempered his tendency towards sarcasm with a polite forbearance, but kept her expression of polite interest firmly affixed. 

“His... ease of manner, and his habit of acting the peacemaker. A very charming gentleman, to be sure!”

“I rather think so,” Elizabeth agreed. 

“But you did always love a red coat, did you not, my dear Eliza?”

Elizabeth was taking an unkind pleasure in refusing to engage, and merely smiled.

Miss Bingley cleared her throat and said, “Yes— you know, I was  _ quite  _ surprised  _ you  _ were to be married to the dear Colonel—” ‘dear?’ thought Elizabeth, ‘you only met him a minute ago’ “—for Mr. Darcy had queried me rather specifically about a possible match for his cousin in town, last winter. It seemed to me a matter of some delicacy and privacy—”

“If it is a confidence he shared with you rather than with myself, perhaps you would do better to keep it.”

“No, for we are all now family, are we not! You are Darcy’s cousin, and I am your sister. That makes us all relations.”

That did not make Miss Bingley Mr. Darcy’s cousin by proxy, but Elizabeth forebore to mention this. 

“Yes— you know, the Fitzwilliams and all their relations, including our own dear Mr. Darcy, have ever been of the opinion that a perfect match is one in which both participants are equal in rank and circumstance.” She said this with faint anxiety; her father, with all his mills, could in no way be considered the social equal of Darcy’s father. “He was... concerned that this long-held belief was not quite right. I assured him that his notion of rank was too nice, that equality of fortune and connection need not be  _ exact  _ as long as it was close. Our family always held  _ temperament  _ to be a stronger argument for matrimony.”

This said nothing good about Mrs. Hurst’s temperament, but Elizabeth forebore to mention this as well. 

“From the account Mr. Darcy gave of his cousin, and some remarks he soon after this let fall about your sister’s temperament, her tendency towards cheerfulness and peacemaking, I thought... well! You will forgive me for making what seemed to me a very reasonable assumption. I admit, I concealed your dear sister’s stay in town from my brother, but only because Mr. Darcy had so strongly hinted that your sister’s soul mate was not my brother, but  _ his cousin _ . I thought I would spare Charles a great deal of pain, for he was most passionately attached to your sister, and it would have ruined his happiness, perhaps forever, to declare himself and see another man’s name upon her wrist.”

A last mystery slotted into place. Elizabeth could no longer recall with exactitude Mr. Darcy’s apology, but knew he had said something about having what seemed to him objective evidence that... was it that Colonel Fitzwilliam’s soulmate was someone else? This idea apparently had not lasted very long, or at least, Caroline Bingley was neglecting to mention that her conversation had only served to convince Darcy that Mrs. Bennet would force Jane to accept anyone who offered for her.

“I see,” said Elizabeth, neutrally. 

“Yes,” said Miss Bingley, beginning to be relieved. “So you can understand that I acted with what I thought was all the correct information at my disposal.”

“Of course,” said Elizabeth, with an insincere smile. 

“I now wonder,” said Miss Bingley, “that Darcy should not be engaged. Does he still follow the family line, in determining a match? I wonder if he has told you. He seems to be on very familiar terms with you, now. Dear Miss Darcy was praising you to the skies last night, over some powder wagons in Bergamot.”

“Burgos.”

“Yes, that.”

“There is considerable intimacy between Colonel Fitzwilliam and Mr. Darcy, but I am afraid I cannot tell you anything about Mr. Darcy’s thoughts on soulmarks and what they may signify.”

“Surely he mentioned something of the subject to you when you and Colonel Fitzwilliam were first engaged?”

The less got into that fiasco the better. Elizabeth said, a little coolly, “It would be a little odd for my husband to rely on his younger, unmarried cousin for advice when choosing a bride.”

Miss Bingley uncomfortably shifted her grip on Elizabeth’s arm, causing the sleeve of her pelisse to slide up. The top of Miss Bingley’s soulmark could be briefly seen, well enough for Elizabeth to guess at the ‘William’ there. 

Half out of spite, half out of a desire to help, Elizabeth said, “Though, now you have mentioned it, I  _ do  _ recall his mentioning that he thought soulmarks were never a partial match.. I suppose that to be the Fitzwilliam influence; they are high sticklers, as you yourself mentioned. A Fitzwilliam Darcy, not only born into, but baptised into such a legacy, must be very nice indeed, in his notions of true matches.” 

Miss Bingley looked discontented, but no more could be said; all were processing into the church.

The ceremony was once again punctuated by Mrs. Bennet’s sniffs, the whispers and sulks by both the bride and the groom’s sisters, and the improper neck-craning of the neighborhood, when Jane and Bingley bared their soulmarks to each other, but Elizabeth was at least able to preserve the moment in the vestry for Jane, and make it as perfect as hers had been. 

The vicar, who had known each Bennet girl before they had been born, could not help but beg a little informal celebration upon the marriage of his favorite; he begged the bride, groom, and their two witnesses to remove their hats and bonnets and poured them each a small flute of champagne, to toast the couple before signing.

Mr. Bingley offered the pen to Jane after a very quick scribble and a quip that Jane should forever after be Mrs. Inkblot. Jane actually laughed when, distracted by this, she took Mr. Bingley's hand instead of the pen. Elizabeth kept her back pressed against the door so that no one could wander in, and came up only when Mr. Darcy turned to her and held out the pen. Elizabeth smiled at him as she took it from him, and bent to write ‘Elizabeth Fitzwilliam.’ She took a moment to look at the page with great satisfaction, seeing in neat lines, the confirmed happiness of a most beloved sister. She felt Mr. Darcy's eye upon her and looked up to see him with an expression difficult to interpret, standing, as he was, in shadow, behind the beam of light let in through the high window to shine with sentimental symbolism upon the church registry book. 

Elizabeth at first wondered if her cap was askew. She was so often riding, and Colonel Fitzwilliam was so fond of pulling affectionately on her curls, she seldom wore caps, and when she did, they were small and close-fitted affairs on the back of her head, more wisps of deconstructed mantillas than proper coverings. She put a discreet hand to her cap to check, but Mrs. Pattinson had pinned truly that morning. A glance down at her white sarcenet hussar cloak revealed that both it and its ermine lining remained spotless. She had chosen to wear under this her own wedding gown of spangled muslin, as it was still her nicest morning dress, but she did not think seven months had contrived to push it wholly out of fashion. A quick glance over her shoulder, disguised as a search for the minister revealed she had not accidentally bled upon in. 

It occurred to her only after she had passed the pen to the minister that Mr. Darcy might be thinking of how unlikely it was he would marry and was perhaps regarding the register rather than herself.

Poor man, thought she.

If this was so, Mr. Darcy shewed it but little, and seemed more alive to her discomfort than his own. When all the others had processed out, Elizabeth lingered a moment in the rectory, leaning one arm against the wall, her other arm clutched tight about her torso, in an attempt to contain the sudden intensity of a cramp. 

“Mrs. Fitzwilliam?” asked Mr. Darcy, turning in the doorway. “Are you— no, truly, you are unwell. Shall I find—”

“Oh, no, please,” said Elizabeth, quickly. She dreaded the thought of her mother finding out. That morning she had been equal to her father’s dry attempts at consolation, but the thought of any more commentary than a passing quip made her feel dreadfully low. 

“Shall I fetch your husband, at least?”

“Oh no, there is no reason to pull him from the throng; he is already more alarmed and anxious than he needs to be,” said Elizabeth. “I must confess, I enjoy being so fussed over, but that, too, shall draw more attention than I really care to receive from all my neighbors.”

Mr. Darcy stood hesitatingly in the doorway, passing his hat from hand to hand. “I am not sure if I should wish you joy.”

“No,” said Elizabeth, a little surprised Colonel Fitzwilliam had not told him. “I suppose you might have yesterday, but that was before I was so incautious as to fall from my horse; today I endure the consequences.”

“I am sorry.” Mr. Darcy grimaced and then said, “I beg your pardon, that sounds to my own ear inadequate.”

Elizabeth almost kept herself from laughing at him. “Oh, Mr. Darcy! I am so sorry I misjudged you so early on in our acquaintance; I should have attended Mr. Bingley more, when he said you search too often for words of four syllable. I see I have mortified you by such indelicate references to my own health, and yet you can only worry that you did not express your sympathies to me sufficiently. It is more than adequate. If you will pretend to be in conversation with me a few moments more while this passes, I should be more grateful to you than I can say.”

“Of course.” Mr. Darcy exerted himself to speak of the ceremony, then, more easily, to speak of the Lope de Vega plays he and Georgiana had been reading in the evenings. Elizabeth had been reading many of them herself, while in Spain, and was eager to discuss her favorites. She was surprised to hear how much his tastes aligned with hers, but then wondered why she should think so. Colonel Fitzwilliam and Mr. Darcy were very close friends, and though perhaps such intimacy had first been formed because they were the only two sensible young men of their bloodline, they were both so intelligent and well-informed that such friendship could not have endured without a similar love of and taste in books. 

“Thank you,” said Elizabeth, when the worst had ebbed away. She straightened herself out, picked up her bonnet from where she had hung it on a chair arm, and said, “Mr. Darcy, it has been a trying few days— more so for you than anyone— and yet you do not demur when I force you to entertain me with talk of Spanish golden age theatre. That is generosity indeed.”

“It comes as a welcome relief, I assure you.”

Elizabeth smiled and wished, in some small measure, to repay his kindness; she recalled his insistence on their family connection in her father’s bookroom and said, putting a gloved hand on his forearm, “Any relief I may offer you, cousin Darcy, I shall with alacrity. You have been far better to me than my treatment of you has ever deserved!”

“That is not the case,” said Mr. Darcy. There was a strange intensity to his expression. “Mrs. Fitzwilliam—”

“Cousin Elizabeth, if you like.”

He forced himself to repeat this, but it did not come naturally; Elizabeth only managed to keep from laughing because he rushed onto his next point, “You must know— I must assure you again, that if there is ever any good I can do for you, I will do it. You need only mention it, and it shall be accomplished.” He looked searchingly at her and said, “You are— you are happy, I think.”

“For Jane?”

“In general.”

“Aye, that I am. This little pain shall pass, and I must confess to you that I am as in love with your cousin as ever I was. I cannot repine any consequences of such mutual affection, even the very particular pains of loss.”

This was either embarassing to him, or not the answer Mr. Darcy sought to his question; he gently moved Elizabeth’s hand to the crook of his arm and kept his gaze on the middle distance as they walked out, behind the rest of the crowd. Elizabeth did not know what hurt Mr. Darcy was so expertly concealing, and tried her best to offer what comfort she would best like to hear, had she been in his place. “You know, my father considers it very odd we should adhere so religiously, in England, to our notion that soulmarks as  _ only  _ the signal of one’s future spouse.” She offered the story of all the Janes who had impacted the life of Mr. Bennet, with the same cheerful tact as she dispensed sticking plasters after battles, for this had assuredly been one for Mr. Darcy. 

“I have heard some speculations that soulmarks but shew the name that will most influence our lives,” said Mr. Darcy, looking down at her. “I cannot entirely think the prevailing custom wrong, but I have taken comfort in that philosophy.”

She was relieved to hear this, and still more relieved to see Colonel Fitzwilliam and Georgiana waiting by the doors of the church. Colonel Fitzwilliam had evidently been searching for her; his sudden smile, upon seeing her, was all it took for Elizabeth to offer an answering one. 

Mr. Darcy very solemnly released her and offered his arm to his sister. 

Colonel Fitzwilliam waited until they had passed to pull affectionately at one of the curls by her temple and say, “Are you alright, my dear?”

“It is better than yesterday,” said Elizabeth, “but it still takes me occasionally by surprise. Mr. Darcy was kindly distracting me with talk of de Vega, who he believes has been unfairly denied the popularity that is his due in England.”

“I am always glad to see how much Darcy has changed,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam. “At least, in regards to you. I think he was always inclined to think well of you, but given....”

“Everything,” supplied Elizabeth, with a comical grimace. “I am not surprised he was cautious, perhaps even suspicious.”

“But he is no longer so,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam, “and it relieves my mind to think that if anything should happen to me, that you have not merely my family to depend upon, but Darcy in particular.”

“You are melancholic,” said Elizabeth, popping on her bonnet. “That I absolutely forbid. Jane is married and I am well, and even Lady Catherine is allowed to be of use! The only question which should now vex you is, ‘how often will you bear me company to Jane’s proposed estate near Derbyshire’?”

“They do not mean to stay at Netherfield?”

“Would you?”

His answering smile was rather wry. “I suppose it depends on how far they will reside from Pemberley; if it is thirty miles or less, we shall not be able to escape their company at least twice a year. I confess myself unequal to denying the insistent hospitality of both my cousin and your sister.”

“We have fortune enough to make travel no evil,” said Elizabeth. “Well, my dear colonel, I suppose we must resign ourselves to the north of England; you may not believe it, after the retreat from Burgos, but I am very eager to see rocks and mountains— provided they are English.”

 


	10. Which is extremely muddy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Colonel Fitzwilliam fans might want to skip to the alternate ending: http://archiveofourown.org/works/9359201

Elizabeth’s passions for these were not always indulged, for Napoleon could not long be awake without engaging in some kind of international conflict. The longest period in which Elizabeth thought herself settled— when Colonel Fitzwilliam was part of the British Army of Occupation, after Napoleon’s first abdication, and had begun to transition a little, from soldiering to peacekeeping— came to an end in March of 1815. Napoleon had tired of the tiny island of Elba, and decided to take back France. Elizabeth and Colonel Fitzwilliam at once quitted Kent (causing Lady Catherine to no end of speeches against the rudeness of Napoleon, to an approving Anne, a resentful Lydia, a simpering Mrs. Jenkins, a fawning Mr. Collins, a resigned Mrs. Collins, and an increasingly silent Mr. Darcy), and raced back to Paris. Colonel Fitzwilliam was much surprised by his orders, when he returned. Given his military record and particular skills, he had assumed they were to mount a defense of Paris, but instead they found they must march to Belgium, and meet with the Allied forces headed towards Paris from the Congress of Vienna.  
  
Despite the tendency of the French to abandon the government foisted upon them by their neighbors in order to violently support the one of their choosing, the British and their allies had not _really_ thought the new French Bourbon government in very much danger. Then, when that fell, they did not _really_ think Napoleon would seize Paris. Then, when he had, they did not _really_ think that he would reach the Belgian border.  
  
Elizabeth and Colonel Fitzwilliam found themselves at a ball in Brussels, thrown by the Duchess of Richmond, when the British and their allies reached the height of incredulity: not only had Napoleon done all this, he had crossed the Franco-Belgian border and was marching to Brussels.  
  
Of course, none knew of this but the Duke of Wellington; Elizabeth saw an aide-de-campe deliver a note to the Duke at supper, but thought little of it. She was tired and found the severeness of Belgian etiquette a trial; her thoughts had been turned longingly towards home for some hours. She merely commented to her husband, “Do you suppose Signoria Grassini has sent him a billet-doux, or is Tsar Alexander hoping His Grace will be his second, the next time he challenges Metternich to a duel?”  
  
“I should think it more probable the Prussians are lost again, and begging for directions.”  
  
“That sounds very likely, but I find my theories are more amusing,” said Elizabeth, hiding a yawn behind her fan. “How late would you like to stay?”  
  
“We may return any time you like,” said he, bending close. His breath stirred the curls at the nape of her neck and she shivered pleasantly. “I do not know how it is, Mrs. Fitzwilliam, but even though I have been privileged enough to see you nearly every day for three years now, I could scarcely take my eyes off you all evening.”  
  
“The wonders of French fashions,” said Elizabeth, trying not to shew how this had affected her. “I have a whole trunkful of things that I purchased in Paris; should you care to see the full extent of my extravagance?”  
  
Elizabeth had changed her gloves for the hinged gold bracelet it was now the fashion to wear at dinners and suppers; Colonel Fitzwilliam, still bent towards her, touched his fingertips to the inside of her forearm, at the crook of her elbow, and slid them down to rest just under her bracelet. His fingertips just brushed the bottom of her soulmark. Elizabeth felt herself beginning to flush.  
  
“I think,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam, smirking a little, “that I should enjoy that a vast deal more than obeying every stricture of Belgian etiquette. Shall we cause a mild scandal and slip out now?”

“I have been longing to slip out since the Gordon Highlanders danced their reel.”  
  
They bid their hasty adieus and were soon very comfortably ensconced in their lodgings. It was perhaps unsurprising that Colonel Fitzwilliam should be undressed and Mrs. Fitzwilliam dressed when one of Wellington’s aides-de-campe knocked on the door, and delivered the news that all officers were to report to their regiments by three-o-clock. Napoleon’s forces were already in Belgium and had engaged with the Prussian army; Colonel Fitzwilliam’s battalion was to hold the crossroads at Quatre-Bras, so that the bulk of the Anglo-allied forces could come to the Prussian’s aid, and to prevent the French from marching onto Brussels. He also added, “His Grace the Duke of Wellington told me particularly to say that he knows you are closeted with Mrs. Fitzwilliam at present, and even so, you must make haste; His Grace would prefer to be closeted with Mrs. Fitzwilliam as well, but he is already ahorse.”  
  
Elizabeth, flushed, but with hair and gown in tolerable order, opened the door enough to reach out and take the hastily writ orders the aide-de-campe held out to her. “Thank you sir, and please convey to His Grace both my blushes, and my husband’s alacrity and obedience.”  
  
The aide-de-campe grinned and touched the brim of his bicorn. “With great pleasure, Mrs. Fitzwilliam."

“Wellington is a rogue,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam, searching for bits of uniform scattered about the room and crammed in trunks.

  
“I am used enough to Army humor,” said Elizabeth, shutting the door. “I have had three— nearly three and a half years of it, by now. But Good God— the French in Belgium already!”

  
“I don’t think anyone expected it, or if they did, expected it quite so soon.”

  
“How could Napoleon have come so far so quickly?” Elizabeth asked, sitting down to ready her husband’s pistols. It was by now as easy and automatic a task as rolling bandages or stitching up a hem.

  
“Recall the Spanish campaign, Lizzy,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam. “Napoleon knows how to march. We do not. My gorget—have you seen it?”

  
“On the dresser.”

  
Elizabeth was more flustered than she had ever been before a battle, not only because it had come by surprise, when she was not precisely in a state to receive visitors, but because she did not know what to do. It had been her habit to attach herself to the traveling hospitals, but the medical service had been disbanded the year before. The battalion surgeon, Colonel Dunne, was just as flustered, and, still in ball dress, ran past Colonel Fitzwilliam’s batman, and nearly burst into the bedroom.

  
“We are popular this evening,” said Elizabeth. “Colonel Dunne, it is very lucky for you I was finished with the pistols. Pray, will you shut the door behind you? My husband is still dressing.”

  
Colonel Fitzwilliam called out from behind the dressing screen, “Colonel Dunne, how d’ye do?”

  
“Badly,” said Colonel Dunne, running a hand through his hair. He affected a Brutus crop, and now it all stood on end, making him look more eccentric than usual. “Colonel Fitzwilliam, I come to you in great perplexity. I have some supplies, and my saws and scalpels, but I have no staff. My two assistants were turned off on half-pay in Toulouse last October, after Napoleon seemed to have abdicated, and I have no notion where any of the stewards are. How can I tend to the wounded with no staff?”

  
“You have Mrs. Fitzwilliam,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam, “if you will forgive my volunteering you, my dear.”

  
“I am very happy to be of some use,” replied Elizabeth. “And I am certain I can round up at least half-a-dozen other ladies of the regiment. Where should you like us, sir?”

  
“We can perhaps pitch a tent as close to the field as we dare,” said Colonel Dunne. “I have a wagon for supplies, but no stretcher-bearers—”

  
“I shall give an order that any foot soldier of mine whose comrade has fallen must be given immediate leave to escort the injured to the medical tent,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam, emerging from behind the dressing screen, in the usual, rather beaten-up uniform he wore into battle. “Pick the strongest two privates to be your stewards. What else do you need?”

  
“Linen, as much as can be got. I have... sufficient, I suppose lint to pack the wounds, but nothing to bind them.”

  
Elizabeth at once flung open the trunk full of sheets and Holland covers from their Paris lodgings— they had left too quickly to cover any of the furniture— and said, “Well sir, here you are. I hope we will not need all of these, but it is of very good quality.”

  
Colonel Fitzwilliam added, “I wish you would take those old Spanish shirts, too, Mrs. Fitzwilliam; they do not wear or wash well, and I would much rather see them on my men as bandages than on me as shirts. I’ll keep an eye out for the properest spot for the medical tent, and send an ensign to guide you thither. Will you help me with my sword?”

  
It was habit with her to buckle on Colonel Fitzwilliam’s sword herself, as (illogically, she acknowledged), it made her feel as if her last embrace before a battle actually offered some physical protection. She held onto him a moment longer than she usually did and felt him press her to him tightly, before kissing her.

  
“There now, my dear,” said he. “We were surprised, but we are not routed. We shall hold them at Quatre Bras, and, if not, at Waterloo. They shall not reach Belgium, not with Wellington in command. I shall see you very soon.”

  
Elizabeth was for some time distracted by her duties, for there were many, and they were more complicated than they had ever been before. Of the forty British regiments in Brussels, perhaps half of them had all their medical officers, and the others were in the same circumstances as Colonel Fitzwilliam’s regiment. Her Brussels neighbor, Mrs. Patrick, a wife of an officer in the 28th Foot, told Elizabeth her regiment had only an assistant surgeon for all six hundred men. There were no plans in place, no municipal hospitals, no ambulances. What supplies there were were limited, far more than even the last stages of the Spanish campaign, after the countryside had been picked over by the world’s two largest armies.

  
“It is a mess,” said Colonel Dunne, as Elizabeth delivered another round of Holland covers ripped into bandages. (The last few ladies she had sent had remained at the main tent, to immediately apply the bandages and sticking plasters they had manufactured.) “Such a mess! I dread to have the other regimental surgeons see me. I have ladies, respectable ladies, wives of officers, attending to men our own general calls the scum of the earth. Some of the men even take their shirts off!”

  
“We have all followed the drum since Spain, at least,” said Elizabeth. “We have seen considerably worse than men with their shirts off.”

  
To Elizabeth had fallen the aggravating lot of organizing people, supplies, and influx of soldiers. Though she had never hosted a ball at a great house, Elizabeth fancied it was much the same, if the house was comprised of three tents pelted with rain, the servants had all quit, the orchestra was comprised entirely of canons, bagpipes, fife and drum corps, and a very slightly tone-deaf cavalry trumpeter, and the guests were all bleeding. She spent most of her time running supplies to the main medical tent and the surgery tent, from the tent where the more decorous or more inexperienced ladies were rolling bandages and trying to make up for a lack of apothecary with what skills they had brought from the stillroom.

  
She was therefore one of the first to hear Colonel Fitzwilliam’s aide-de-camps shouting, “A doctor for the Colonel; he has been shot!”

  
Elizabeth at once dropped the chair cover she had been picking apart, and raced out of the tent. She was extremely relieved to see Colonel Fitzwilliam looking annoyed and clutching his upper right arm. “Mrs. Fitzwilliam,” said he, spotting her, “covered in mud again, I see.”

  
“It is my natural state, sir,” she managed to get out.

  
He cracked a smile. “Do not look quite so frightened; I was incautious enough to be injured, but it is not severe. If Colonel Dunne can dig the bullets out of my arm, I shall be right enough.” Then, seeing she was not satisfied, he sighed and raised his gloved hand, so she could see the injury herself. “As you see: two bullet holes in front, none in the back. It does not hurt enough for the bone to have been hit. It is a very simple injury. Will you fetch me a fresh shirt from your rag bag?”

She do so with alacrity. Her husband was quoting John Donne at Colonel Dunne when Elizabeth returned. Colonel Dunne bore this with good humor, as he always did, and said, “Ah, Mrs. Fitzwilliam. I have good report of the patient. He only swore at me once and I got two bullets and part of a uniform out of the meat of his arm. Have we any vinegar left?”

“No sir; I was only able to procure a couple of bottles before we rode out.”

  
“Blast. And I’ve no wine or oil either— well, no matter. It would be best if I could wash the blood away to see better, but I wiped away what I could.” He squinted at the wound. “I... believe it is clean? Damn it, I would trade my epaulettes for a little vinegar. Strings like the devil, but it keeps the blood from flowing long enough for a good look. A surgeon friend of mine in the Coldstream Guards swears that washing his hands in the stuff before operating does wonders, too.”

  
Colonel Fitzwilliam grimaced dramatically as Colonel Dunne gave one last prod at the wound. “Oh yes, that gentleman has told me of his theory many times, though I must admit, I hardly ever attended him. Something to do with miasmas?”

  
Colonel Dunne carefully applied a lint pad over the wound, before taking the fresh bandage Elizabeth offered him. “Aye, you’ve the right of it. The scent of the vinegar is so strong, it keeps bad air from entering into the body through the wound.”

  
“Like smelling a vinaigrette, for faintness?” asked Elizabeth.

  
“Oh aye, much the same idea as that, Mrs. Fitzwilliam. A strong scent to drive out the bad ones. I have often wondered if perfume might have the same effect. Certainly since you and the ladies of the regiment have been assisting me, the men are far less likely to die of infection as they once were.” He took a critical look at his handiwork. “Well, the day’s business is only just begun; the air cannot be too bad. I do not think there can be much fear of infection.”

  
One of the privates hastily promoted to a hospital steward came running into the cordoned off section of the tent where the three of them stood. “Sir, Lieutenant Hawkins took a bayonet to a, er....” He glanced at Elizabeth and coughed. “To a, er, delicate place, sir.” He let fall the sheet as Lieutenant Hawkins came waddling by, looking more vexed than gravely injured.

  
Colonel Dunne sighed. “And now, I must to the next patient.”

  
“I can clean this part of the tent for you,” offered Elizabeth.

  
“I am much obliged! So obliged, in fact, that I shall even return the bullets to you.” He gestured at the basin beside him, as he ducked under a hanging sheet to the next patient. “You may have them made into ear-rings, a souvenir of Belgium.”

  
“I shall cede my part of the spoils,” said Elizabeth, taking the bloody shirt and putting down the fresh one in its place.

  
“Thank you my dear,” said the Colonel. He was bare from the waist up, and Elizabeth was relieved to see no other injuries, though she was still concerned enough to check the bloody circles of red wool in the basin against the holes in his uniform coat.

  
“I am afraid you shall have to sew up the hole rather than patch it,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam, pulling on the new shirt. “It is such a comforting thing, to have a wife; I spend half of what I once did on clothes since you fix them all for me. Though I think the shirt may be lost. Can you turn it to bandages?”

  
Elizabeth looked at it critically. “I am sure the stain can be washed out— but hold a moment, there is a hole here— I think the balls took part of your shirt as well as your coat.”

  
“Colonel Dunne saw only wool, not linen. It is one of the shirts you had made for me in Spain; they do not wear well.”

  
As she turned over the shirt in her hands, she became convinced this was otherwise. “Perhaps I may have packed this with your Spanish shirts, but I made this one myself. I do not see any other holes. I really do think—”

  
But then came in the lieutenant-colonel, too seriously injured to ride, and Colonel Fitzwilliam put on the rest of his uniform at once.

  
“Do you really think it wise?” Elizabeth asked, though she still assisted him with coat, shoulderbelt, sash, and sword. “I have seen too many injuries imperfectly cleaned to be easy. I should hate to see it turned septic.”

  
“I should hate to see us routed by the French, even more,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam, fastening on his gorget. “If we keep control of these cross-roads, Ney and his forces cannot make it to Brussels, even if the Prussians lose their battle at Ligny."

  
“I think you underestimate the danger,” said Elizabeth, by now sincerely worried.

  
“Of what, infection, or the French?” Colonel Fitzwilliam kissed her forehead. “If anything, you overestimate the danger, Mrs. Fitzwilliam. If it will satisfy you, I shall have Colonel Dunne poke at my arm again, when the day’s business is ended. But I must away; I do not like leaving the captains entirely to their own devices, in so hot an action.”

 

***

 

The day’s business tumbled headlong into the next. Colonel Fitzwilliam's regiment had arrived on the 16th at Quatre Bras, where the fighting had begun the day previous, and been ordered to hold the nearby Bossu Woods. This they managed to accomplish, though with more injuries than they would have wished, and with the loss of nearly the entire 69th division and its standard. While in defense of the woods, he came across a small cottage, hastily abandoned by its occupants as soon as they had seen the French army advance; this he requisitioned for Colonel Dunne, and the ladies of the regiment, when they were too exhausted to tend to the wounded. Elizabeth had never felt so tired in her life, but still found herself to compelled to remain awake, for lack of sufficient bedrooms, and roll bandages in what passed for the sitting room.

  
“I have not been sick at the sight of a battlefield in some years,” Colonel Fitzwilliam said wearily to her, dropping down next to her, on the divan, “But I was this evening. We have the crossroads, but at a ghastly cost.”

  
Elizabeth shivered. She had flung an evening cloak and an apron over her ball gown, but still felt insufficiently attired. “Have you heard if the Prussians were equally successful?”

  
“Not yet.” He sighed and said, “Forgive my importuning you, my dear, but my head aches with sleeplessness and the noise of the guns— may I?”

  
“If you do not mind the mud?”

  
“My dear, I should not recognize you without it, by now.”

  
Elizabeth moved the rolls of bandages off her lap, and Colonel Fitzwilliam put his head there. It comforted her to stroke the hair off his forehead, though she was alarmed at how hot he felt to the touch. “You are overheated, sir.”

  
“I shouldn’t doubt it,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam. “This is the first time I have dismounted my horse since I was injured earlier, and we have been firing continuously all afternoon.” He managed to sleep what remained of the night, and Elizabeth part of it, until the rain began, and two of the lieutenants’ wives came rushing into the sitting room in a panic, as the secondary medical tent had been halfway ripped out of the ground by the wind. Elizabeth slid out, arranging her husband on the divan, and once more committed herself to the cause of getting her petticoats a full twelve inches deep in mud.

  
It was unfortunately in this state the Wellington saw her, trying to salvage what she could before everything was spoilt by rain.

  
He tipped his bicorn at her and said, “Unusual eggs you have found, Mrs. Fitzwilliam."

  
Elizabeth, clutching a very damp peasant’s straw hat to the top of her head, and hugging an eggbasket full of bandages to her side, replied, “Yes, the byproduct of Holland covers, Your Grace. They shall hatch shortly as bandages.”

  
“You ferry medical supplies yourself?”

  
“Only when the regiment’s medical staff has been reduced to Colonel Dunne, and Colonel Dunne alone, sir. One physician cannot supply the wants of six hundred men.”

  
Wellington gestured at one of his aides-de-campe. “Attend Mrs. Fitzwilliam, will you? See to it she gets all this to Colonel Dunne, or onto his medical wagon. I take it Colonel Fitzwilliam is inside?”

  
Elizabeth directed His Grace to the sitting room, before overloading her helper with baskets and bottles. They had moved nearly everything inside, or on the wagon by the time Wellington came striding out again. She let down her apron and the skirt of her ball gown, to try and hide the worst of the mud as she curtsied, but she was uncertain of her success. Wellington merely quirked his upper lip at her, in his version of a smile, and said, “No need; it is when you are not covered in mud, Mrs. Fitzwilliam, that I am alarmed about the —th Foot,” before bidding her good day and mounting his horse again.

  
Colonel Fitzwilliam was now awake, and feeling refreshed enough to be sarcastic as he looked at a map he’d spread out over his lap. “What,” he asked, as Elizabeth came back in, futilely shaking the rain off her cloak, “is the point of having allies? They do nothing but make us scramble. The Prussians were defeated at Ligey and are said to be marching to Wavre.”

"Are we retreating?” asked Elizabeth.

  
“Yes, along the Brussels road to some village called Waterloo that Wellington has had in mind for its hills. People say Wellington is a difficult man to please, but really, all he wants in life are a few hills, and a few competent men to march up and down them.”

  
“Marching up and down hills seems quite contrary to your usual assignments.”

  
“Oh no, I am used as I always am: to hold. My regiment is to help hold an estate near the village— Hougoumont, I think it’s called— to defend the right flank of the main force. Just fancy, Lizzy, I am at last master of a grand house and working farm, and lieutenant-colonels of the Coldstream Guards will be taking their orders from me. It is a nice homecoming; I went from Captain to Major in that regiment; it is a very great pleasure to be in command of even four companies of it, if only temporarily.” Colonel Fitzwilliam folded up the map, wincing a little at the movement of his right arm. “Unfortunately, I am stationed there because His Grace thinks any other commander is very likely to be overrun. Your makeshift hospital will have to be closer to Brussels than Hougoumont, my dear. I only hope we can get men to you.”

  
“I know you do not like to do it, but will you please pull rank and insist upon seeing Colonel Dunne, before he is sent away?”

  
This Colonel Fitzwilliam did, mostly to oblige her, for he was much pressed to finish his dispatches and letters before departing. Colonel Dunne had been sleeping off the worst of his exhaustion, in what had been the cottage’s pantry, and his first exclamation upon being brought into the sitting room, was, “Dear God, sir, I am behindhand already. I meant to see you before I slept, but there seemed to be twenty new cases of powder burns in indelicate places. Still, I ought to have—”

  
“You were seeing to the men as they came in, and had already seen me,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam, with a tired smile. “How should it be otherwise? But before we retreat to this escapement near Waterloo that Wellington has been dreaming about a year or more, I thought it wise to be sure I had full use of my sword arm.”

  
To Elizabeth’s mixed alarm and satisfaction, some slight inflammation of the wound was proof enough that she had been right, and though Colonel Dunne absolutely forbade her from assisting with any kind of operation (for reasons of both propriety and practicality— Elizabeth, fit and active as she was, had not the sufficient strength to hold down a grown man), the two privates he had arbitrarily selected as stewards did their duties well. Colonel Fitzwilliam was greatly relieved the infection was not so severe as to require amputation, merely new surgery and bandages.

  
Colonel Dunne was inclined to be optimistic, for he had matched the bits of linen to the holes in the shirt Elizabeth had preserved, and had even had the opportunity to bleed Colonel Fitzwilliam to treat his slight fever. Colonel Dunne waxed rhapsodic about vinegar again, but all that could be done with what they had, had been done.

  
“Let this be a lesson to me,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam, grimacing as he pulled on his shirt again. “I ought always to listen to you. Where on earth has my cloak got to?”

  
“Surely you do not mean to go immediately out into this?” asked Elizabeth, with an expansive gesture, to try and encompass all the rain, lightening and mud outdoors.

  
“I am afraid I must; all but the light infantry must be gone before midday, and it is now gone ten-o-clock.”

  
Elizabeth did not think marching hours in a thunderstorm to be a particularly wise idea in regards to her husband’s recovery, but it would be equally injurious to his health if the French found him. Such, she reflected, were the unhappy choices of war. “I suppose I ought to be glad you command a regiment of regulars, not light infantry, and shall be settled quite civilly into a chateau by this afternoon. What is the light infantry doing, covering the retreat?”

  
“Acting as decoys long enough that the cavalry may then be brought in, to distract Marshal Ney.” He paused to hold onto the back of the chair where his stock hung, and slowly shook his head, as if to clear it. “I always forget how long it takes for my humors to adjust after a blood-letting. It is a pity; I always prided myself on being good humored.”

  
Elizabeth tucked herself under his arm, so he might have something to lean on both sides. Colonel Fitzwilliam pressed his forehead to hers. It still felt alarmingly warm.

  
“This is a damned close-run thing,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam, softly. “I hate to admit it, Lizzy, but I have no idea who will win. Wellington himself said we have been humbugged. Do not wander too far from Colonel Dunne and the other ladies. I’d try and make you go to Antwerp and then to England, if I thought for a moment you’d agree to it.”

  
“Of course I won’t.” Elizabeth said, in a rallying tone. “I doubt you could make me go farther than Brussels. I know Frenchwomen are even more involved in the action; if it would not so outrage English sensibilities, I would take water and brandy onto the field like the French vivandieres.”

He raised his head and, pulling on one of her damp, wind-blown curls, said, “You are a rare woman, Mrs. Fitzwilliam. Now, my sword?”

  
Elizabeth felt a sense of encroaching dread as she put her arms about Colonel Fitzwilliam. She tried, instead, to feel pleased that the Duke of Wellington had so singled out her husband— it was a great compliment to Colonel Fitzwilliam’s understated competence— but this did not hold.

  
“What’s this, Lizzy?” asked Colonel Fitzwilliam, in a tone of forced and unconvincing cheerfulness. “Fearsome Mrs. Fitzwilliam, overset?”

  
“Only a little,” said she, wiping her eyes on the lapel of his uniform. “I am merely tired. And a little embarrassed that so august a person as the Duke of Wellington should still have seen me looking quite so disreputable.”

  
“Really?” he teased. “After all your talk of Paris fashions... dear God, was it only yesterday?”

  
“Oh yes, the whole ensemble is straight out of _La Belle Assemble_. Battledress: A round-gown of soft white satin with demi train; bosom and sleeves embellished with primrose ribbon; eight to twelve inches of mud on the petticoat, height left to the wearer’s discretion. Brown leather riding boots to be laced tight over white silk stockings. A blood-stained linen apron, drenched evening cloak of dirty primrose satin, and a moulding straw hat is fancifully worn over the whole.”

  
Colonel Fitzwilliam laughed and kissed her. “There’s my Lizzy! Ensign Leigh is acting as a courier for me; if you want to write any letters, add them to the pile there— though, now that I think on it, I shall need you to be sure everything’s wrapped in oilskin and taken. Will you see to it?”

  
“You may rely upon me.”

  
“I always do.” He rallied tolerably, but when she walked him to the door, he paused, took her left hand, and kissed her soulmark, very nearly in public. “Te amo, my dear Bennet.”

  
Elizabeth took a moment to press her palm against his unshaven cheek. “Te amo, my dear Fitzwilliam.” Her voice cracked slightly, but it was easier for both of them to pretend it hadn’t, and that their parting was entirely dry-eyed and composed.

  
Upon her return to the sitting room, Elizabeth noticed, amongst the more formal dispatches, letters to Colonel Fitzwilliam’s family. The letter to Georgiana had not been finished or closed; she sat down to finish writing it so that she would not be staring stupidly out the warped glass of the window at her husband chivying his men into their ranks. It was not a coherent letter, featuring mostly her riff on _La Belle Assemble_ , and she closed it with accidental honesty:

  
_The regiment is to hold Hougoumont, the principal estate, I believe of the village of Waterloo. Richard is not sanguine. It alarms me more than I can presently write. He, who always underestimates danger, and even yesterday thought I was being too anxious over an injury he received in the arm...which, by the by, turned out to be as serious as I thought! It gave him a fever (though he was bled for it this morning and expects to shortly be better)._

  
_I have been many times anxious for his safety and my own, but for the first time, I am truly frightened._

 

***

 

The rest of the day was devoted to moving, to paying very bewildered Belgian farmers for the use of their buildings, and to what snatches of sleep could be gotten in cramped corners. Elizabeth managed to wash, but not to change her gown, for the only trunk she had taken with her from Brussels was full of linen for bandages. One of the other ladies at least gave her a clean shift to put on, but as she must then put back on a gown and petticoat not satisfactorily cleaned, it did not make her feel very much more refreshed.

  
Sunday, the 18th of June, was misery of the acutely kind. The heat was oppressive, and the canons close and loud enough to set windows and teeth rattling, and for a choking, acrid fog of cannon smoke to hang over them all. The defense of Hougoumont began sometime mid morning, and the closeness of the action and the numbers and position of the French meant that they did not hear from the company proper until well after the engagement was over. The wounded retreated from the grounds and courtyard not to the distant Colonel Dunne, but instead into the house, where the assistant surgeon of the Coldstream Guard was taxed to his limit.

  
When Elizabeth and the other ladies were not busy with men wounded at Quatre Bras and in the retreat to Hougoumont, they tormented themselves by deciphering each trumpeted command and naming each regiment’s fifes, drums, and bagpipes. They knew who had engaged in battle and when, but not where, and not to what effect. By the afternoon, Elizabeth felt stupid with nerves and lack of sleep and was for some time irritable over so late a start to that day’s battle.

  
“Really?” asked Mrs. Kirke, who paused at four-o’-clock to drink tea and eat plain bread with Elizabeth. Mrs. Kirke’s brother had taken over the farmhouse across from Colonel Dunne and the visit had the absurd air of a village social call. “I am surprised at you, Mrs. Fitz. You are always joking about mud and now you pay no attention to it.”

  
“What can you mean?”

  
“Why, Boney is an artillery officer, my dear! Just as Wellington is a cavalryman. Early training always tells. Wellington can maneuver. It is easy to move horses and men in mud. Boney cannot. You cannot move a cannon until the ground has firmed.”

  
Elizabeth did not respond; soldiers from other regiments, deserters and injured men alike, were now bringing reports that the fighting at Hougoumont had grown so hot the chateau itself was on fire.

  
Mrs. Kirke was troubled but two hours later was sanguine once again. “The day is not lost quite yet; there are three points of conflict: Hougoumont, La Haie-Sainte, and Le Havre. I have heard only that La Haie-Sainte has been taken, according to reports I trust. I would weep if your husband was at La Haie-Sainte, but he is not. Hougoumont is still held, even if it is on fire. We would have seen more men fleeing this way if both farms were taken. Stiff upper lip, Mrs. Fitz.”

  
Elizabeth found this impossible. Of the three points of conflict one had already been won by the French. After so long a war, after so desperate a battle, she did not expect the French to treat any British civilian kindly. The other ladies were equally despondent. When they heard the marching song of Napoleon’s own personal guard, the Old Guard, who had never retreated or been defeated throughout all the years of war, some even fled back to Brussels. Mrs. Kirke blamed them, but Elizabeth could not. Only the obstinate thought that here, at least, she was doing something useful, kept her so close to the battlefield. Her own death had seemed remote and unlikely before; now Elizabeth consoled herself with the thought that for a woman of four-and-twenty, she had no cause to repine never reaching five-and-twenty. She had been happy and had accomplished a great deal. “See to it,” she wrote to Jane, in a fit of gallows humor, “that they write, ‘HERE LIES ELIZABETH BENNET FITZWILLIAM, AN ACCOMPLISHED WOMAN’ on my tombstone. I do not know if I shall lie under it, but it will comfort me to know I have got the very last word against Miss Bingley.”

Then came to Elizabeth the sweetest music she had ever heard: the very distinctive sound of Prussian regiments on the march.

  
It gave her much more pleasure to write, “Do not pay the stonemason just yet! My dear, I have never before wept to hear drums, but I can scare write I cry from such relief. Napoleon could have defeated Wellington or Blucher, but he cannot defeat both at once! Jane, the battle is won!”

  
Around nine or ten-o-clock, Elizabeth began to see some of their own regiment. The French had spent far too many of their forces at Hougoumont, which refused to fall; upon seeing Napoleon’s Old Guard fleeing from the field, these broken remnants gave up and fled as well. One of the companies, under the command of Colonel Fitzwilliam's most trusted captain, chased after them, and it was the men injured in this action that made it to the hospital.

  
No one could at first give a full account of Colonel Fitzwilliam, except through his orders to the four companies under his command. Elizabeth was not very worried, particularly as a couple of NCOs and a handful of privates were able to give her an eyewitness account of Colonel Fitzwilliam from about noon. An axe-wielding madman, according to one private, or French sub-lieutenant with an axe, according to his sergeant, managed to cut down the wooden doors of the north gate.

  
“And now Napoleon sends against us literal gatecrashers,” Colonel Fitzwilliam had apparently said. “These French officers are no gentlemen. Shall we teach them some manners?”

  
(Another group of privates maintained Colonel Fitzwilliam had said something about barbarians at the gate. Elizabeth was inclined to believe her husband said both of these; they both sounded sarcastic enough to be true.)

  
Colonel Fitzwilliam and a small party of mostly regular footsoldiers, with three or four officers and NCOs, fought through the melee. Only Colonel Fitzwilliam, and two members of the Coldstream Guard, Lieutenant-Colonel James MacDonald, and corporal James Graham, reached the gate. Colonel Fitzwilliam slammed shut the doors; Corporal Graham lifted and set in place the beam to bar the door; Lieutenant-Colonel MacDonald lead the effort to barricade the gate with flagstones. The French sub-lieutenant, seeing that he and his men were now trapped without hope of escape, had taken his axe to Colonel Fitzwilliam, who had not been expecting it. Colonel Fitzwilliam was at first clumsy in his defense and had been somehow injured, though it was not clear how, or why, but multiple soldiers assured Elizabeth that he had not injured enough to retire from the field. He had continued to fight until the French company had surrendered, and only then gone indoors to have his wounds dressed, and to see how the southern gate held.

  
The last anyone had heard, Colonel Fitzwilliam had gotten orders from Wellington himself to hold the chateau at all costs, which lead to the assembled company spending the last part of the battle physically at Hougoumont fighting fire, as much as the French, but no one was entirely sure what had happened to the Colonel once the fire had been doused and the French gone. Later men were equally unable to give their reports. The orders for injured men to find their regimental surgeons had presumably been given by Colonel Fitzwilliam, but had been announced by the captain of each squadron.

  
Elizabeth’s early ebullience was beginning to fade. As in character it was for Colonel Fitzwilliam to follow his orders to the letter (probably grumbling all the while), his continued absence, especially with a fresh injury, was a source of increasing anxiety. She became really convinced that something was wrong, that he had been injured more seriously than had been understood, and settled it with one of the lieutenants she liked best in the regiment, a Lieutenant Brandon, that if Colonel Fitzwilliam was not back by midnight, she would ride in search of him.

 

***

 

Lieutenant Brandon had gathered together two or three other junior officers well enough to ride, by the time Elizabeth had finished bandaging the last mild burn left to her. The line of men with worse injuries, or with injuries in places too indelicate for a lady to see, was still full long, and she looked upon it with dismay. But it was now midnight, and she thought she might go mad if she waited any longer.

  
Colonel Dunne was in an exhausted heap in a hallway, waiting for a private to finish re-sharpening the dulled bone saws, before he returned to his surgery in what had once been a dining room. He had rolled his shirt-sleeves; one could dimly see ‘Hippocrates’ in Greek characters, through the crust of dried blood on his left forearm.

  
Elizabeth touched him gently on the shoulder as she passed. “I hate to leave you, sir, but....”

  
Colonel Dunne roused himself. “Mrs. Fitzwilliam, I hate more that I cannot accompany you. I should have liked to see to that axe wound myself.”

  
“You would take on more work?” Elizabeth asked, attempting to tease.

  
“Aye,” said Colonel Dunne. “I still have amends to make for not catching the bits of shirt in the wound; my only excuse was that I was so pressed for time, rushing from one surgery to the next, that I did not look twice.”

“I am sure my husband did not encourage you to look twice.”

  
“No, but I ought to have overruled him. You know his temperament; he would have grumbled, but submitted.”

  
“You know him well, sir.”

  
“Oh aye. You cannot avoid become intimate friends with a man after you’ve spent... what, is it five years now? Yes, five years pulling bits of metal out of him. God speed Mrs. Fitzwilliam, and send an ensign at once if you need me.”

  
Elizabeth agreed to this, though, as she watched the stream of men leaving Hougoumont streaming back to Brussels, and past their makeshift hospital, she was less and less inclined to do so. She had thought the morning and afternoon’s crowds had been bad, but it was nothing to this, now that the severely injured were beginning to be carried off the battlefield. Spain and Portugal had their moments of horror, but never had they been so concentrated.

  
Hougoumont was itself alarming enough to fill her nightmares for years afterwards. There were two doors to Hougoumont— the northern door to the farm, which was still bolted and still bore axe marks, when they passed it, and the southern door, to the chateau. Though the French had not breached this second set of doors, they had essayed it a great deal, and Elizabeth’s party had to move slowly, to avoid stepping upon the dead and the wounded. She had thought to equip herself with a perfumed handkerchief, and put this over her mouth and nose, to disguise the worst scents of battle, and to limit the effects of the smoke— the chateau had been burnt to several still smoldering walls and all was still confusion. The wounded were in every room that still remained a room, and several that had neither walls nor roof, merely the suggestion of having once been part of a building. Elizabeth had dismounted and was passing out what medical supplies she had thought to bring with her, before a corporal of the —th Foot recognized her and directed her and her escort towards what remained of the stables. The last he had heard, Colonel Fitzwilliam had been intending to ride out.

  
She was still carrying a basket of bandages when she finally saw her husband, drooping over the neck of his horse— though as he drew nearer, she saw he was not drooping, he was draped.

  
Colonel Fitzwilliam was unconscious.

  
Elizabeth dropped her basket. Bandages rolled pell-mell. She leapt over them. She very nearly ran into Colonel Fitzwilliam’s batman, who was leading the horse, and almost ricocheted into a second horse and rider.

  
This gentleman dismounted and, coming into the light, was revealed to be in the uniform of the Coldstream Guards. His epaulettes and braid proved him to be a lieutenant-colonel.

  
“Mrs. Fitzwilliam, I presume?” asked he. “I am Lieutenant-Colonel MacDonald. I had the great honor of serving as your husband’s second-in-command here at Hougoumont.”

Elizabeth said something, she knew not what, and reached up to her husband. She took the dangling left arm and felt for the pulse under her own name. “I cannot— he is alive?”

  
Lieutenant-Colonel MacDonald took off his bicorn and pressed it to his sooty breast.

“Mostly, madame. He took an axe-blow to the ribs at half-past noon that was stitched up, as soon as we had possession of the courtyard once more, but it slowed him a great deal, and after we put out the fire, he seemed fairly extinguished himself. When the French left, Colonel Fitzwilliam said, “Our guests finally realized that they were not welcome, did they? I thought barring the door a pretty strong hint,” and collapsed. He is very feverish. We bled him, and after a little rest, decided it would be best to try and move him to Brussels. There isn’t a carriage to be got about here for love or money, so— well, he managed to indicate he could ride, and did mount himself, but—” He swallowed. “Well. He is as you see, madam.”

  
She had found a pulse, weak and uneven. Elizabeth turned her head over her shoulder and cried, “Quickly now, a surgeon for Colonel Fitzwilliam!”

The only doctor present was one of the assistant surgeons of the Coldstream Guards. His chief and fellow assistant had remained with the bulk of the guards, on the plains of Waterloo, and he was upset to the point of humiliation that his best efforts had not been enough.

  
He spoke despairingly of the air, thick with smoke, still, and full of the scent of corruption. This must have infected the colonel’s axe wound, for the blood-letting had done nothing to ameliorate the fever. Elizabeth asked, if the blood-letting was not effective, if anything else could be done, but the surgeon seemed really near tears at her request. He demanded to know what could be done, when all the medical supplies currently at Hougoumont were what she and her escort had brought with her. He had been taking bandages off the dead to use on the living for hours now; there was no ice; there was not even water.

  
“Something must be done,” insisted Lieutenant-Colonel MacDonald. “For God’s sake, man, at least try to bleed him once more.”

  
Men at once crowded Elizabeth out, to get her husband off his horse— after passing forward her evening cloak, as it was the closest thing anyone had to a blanket, Elizabeth rushed to the well, incredulous that there could be no water.

  
She had never drawn her own water before and was finding the experience remarkably difficult. Her bootheels sank into the mud; she strained against the rope. Then she heard faint cries in French from the interior of the well.

  
Frozen with incredulity, nearly at an angle with the ground in her efforts to haul up the bucket, Elizabeth at first did not notice Wellington and his staff entering the courtyard.

  
“You call yourselves gentlemen, and make Mrs. Fitzwilliam haul her own water?” came Wellington’s voice.

  
At once a half-dozen ensigns and sub-lieutenants took the rope from her and heaved, bringing up not a water bucket, but a French lieutenant. He meekly offered his sword before daring to let go of the rope and collapse in a wet heap on the ground, and reporting a number of other comrades, living and dead, still in the well.

  
“Hm,” said Wellington. “No wonder you were having trouble, Mrs. Fitzwilliam.”

Elizabeth was, for the first time, rather too stupefied to be clever. “Well,” she said, and hoped this passed for wit.

  
“To more pleasant subjects— where is your husband, madam? He has done magnificently. I sent only twenty-one battalions here; Napoleon sent thirty-three, and yet Hougoumont is ours. Even the clerks and copy-boys of Whitehall must be pleased with these figures.”

  
“Sir, I fear he must decline,” said Elizabeth, pale and agitated. “He took an axe blow when defending the northern gate, sir, and he had been already wounded at Quatre Bras. At present he is too ill to even be moved. I do not know—”

  
Wellington at once dismounted and strode into the farmhouse, where Colonel Fitzwilliam had been taken. Elizabeth went into the courtyard, in search of a good place to cry without being observed, but here she found only more anguish. There was blood upon the gate, an axe on the ground, an empty trench of dirt where the pavement had been ripped up. The bodies, at least, had been taken away, but the detritus on the cobblestones bore witness of their passing.

  
She did not know how long she walked around it, looking about, trying to piece together the battle from what scraps remained, but it could not have been long. When Wellington came out again he found her at the wooden doors, studying the axe marks as if trying to make out the writing on the Rosetta Stone.

  
“The success of the whole battle depended on the closing of this gate,” said he. "You may depend upon it that no troops but the British could have held Hougoumont, and only the best of them at that."

  
Elizabeth did not know how to ask what she chiefly wished to know.

  
“Have you any family in Brussels, Mrs. Fitzwilliam?” asked Wellington, after a moment.

  
This was answer enough. Elizabeth cleared her throat, but her voice did not sound like her own when she said, “No, sir, but my friend Mrs. Kirke, and her brother are not far down the road, and my father-in-law should still be at Matlock House, in London.”

  
Wellington nodded. “Major Percy rides with news of my victory; I shall include a note to the Earl of Matlock.” He mounted his horse, tipped his hat to her and said, “Give one of my aides your address in Brussels, madam; I shall call on you when the Colonel has been moved.”

 

***

 

By Tuesday, the roads had somewhat cleared, a cart had been procured, and Colonel Fitzwilliam had been moved (though he was thoroughly insensible of it). The awful day spent nursing her unconscious, feverish husband in a ruined farmhouse, punctuated by her desperate attempts to move him, and to find and procure any kind of cart of carriage, had left Elizabeth almost without strength. A bath and a change of clothes had not made her feel very much more human, only, ironically, less capable of doing anything. That evening found her sitting on the floor of the hallway from the bedroom to the sitting room in her lodgings. Her aim had been to bring fresh tea and a bowl for bloodletting to to Colonel Dunne, who attended Colonel Fitzwilliam in the bedroom, but the enormity of the past week suddenly overwhelmed her, and found she had to sit, from actual, and unconquerable weakness.

  
It was in this state of exhausted shock that Elizabeth first heard a quick, but deliberate step come up the stairs. The footsteps stopped at the fourth floor, where the Fitzwilliams had their suite of rooms, and ended with a knock upon the door; Elizabeth idly wondered how bad it would be to receive the Duke of Wellington while sitting on the floor, her arms balanced in her raised knees, and her head tipped back against the wall.

  
Elizabeth’s maid, Mrs. Pattinson, opened the door, as Colonel Fitzwilliam’s batman was assisting Colonel Dunne, and said, very puzzled, “Good evening, Your Gr—er, good evening sir, are you expected?”

  
“I daresay I am not,” came the voice of Mr. Darcy.

  
Elizabeth was so shocked, she remained where she was, quite unable to believe the evidence of her own senses.

  
“Are your master and mistress at home?” said what was unmistakably Mr. Darcy.

  
Mrs. Pattinson stepped back in some confusion. “Lord bless me! Mr. Darcy, sir?”

  
It was Darcy, unshaven, great coat crumpled, with one of its capes inside-out over his shoulder like a foxhound’s ear after a long chase. Impatiently, tersely, he agreed this was his name and was halfway through asking again after Elizabeth and the colonel when Elizabeth began struggling to her feet with an astonished cry of, “Mr. Darcy, how is this possible?”

  
He was at her side in two quick strides, taking her unconsciously outstretched right hand in his own, and putting arm about her waist to help her straighten up. “Georgianna received your letter at breakfast Monday. I departed no more than an hour after she had finished reading it aloud. I was able to hire a yacht from Ramsgate easily enough; the real delay was in getting from Antwerp to Brussels. The roads are truly appalling, even on horseback.”

  
“From London to Brussels in two days! Impossible man, you must not have slept in all that time.”

  
“I slept during the Channel crossing.”

  
Tears sprang to her eyes. “You could not know if we had won or lost when you set out.”

  
“No,” said Mr. Darcy, gravely.

  
Elizabeth pressed his hand. “What would you have done if you arrived in Antwerp, and heard of Napoleon's great victory?”

  
He ignored this question and instead steered her into the sitting room, giving orders to the still astonished Mrs. Pattinson to see if his horse, being held downstairs by some urchin or other, could be stabled, and his saddlebags brought up. Mr. Darcy looked down at Elizabeth’s pale, wretched face and a added, “And a glass of wine for your mistress— she is unwell.”

  
“Truly, it is exhaustion only,” said Elizabeth, brushing tears from her cheeks. Mr. Darcy sat her down at her work table, which was still littered with half-cut linen and rolls of bandages, and a grubby, sooty letter to her father about the action at Hougoumont. “Darcy, I am well, I promise you I am well.”

  
He flung his greatcoat over an easy chair by the fire, looking askance at the muddy, ruined ballgown still draped over the screen hiding the copper bathtub from view. “Hm.”

  
Elizabeth followed the line of his gaze and managed a watery laugh. “I beg you will never mention seeing that to Miss Bingley and Mrs. Hurst. Word arrived of the French invasion in the middle of the Duchess of Richmond’s ball. We rushed out to Quatre Bras so precipitously I had not the chance to change my gown until a few hours ago.” She was able to get through Quatre Bras, Colonel Fitzwilliam’s orders to hold Hougoumont at all costs, and her own activities and interrogations of her patients with perfect equanimity. She found she could give a tolerably composed account of the fight for the gate, but could not go on after that.

  
Elizabeth cut and rolled bandages as she talked, but now stared at the linen before her, unsure what to do with them. Darcy put one of his hands over hers and asked, quietly, “Where is Richard?”

  
“Our regimental surgeon is with him now. But I cannot— I do not— Good God, I thought I had written this enough times to speak of it with composure. These attentions I fear come too late. What can be done, now that infection has set in? I know nothing can be done, and yet— I cannot bear to accept it.”

  
Colonel Dunne then came out in search of the blood-letting bowl and, seeing Elizabeth crying over a pile of half-rolled linen strips, with an unknown gentleman gripping her hand and staring fixedly at her, was at first inclined to throw Darcy out on his ear.

  
“No, no,” said Elizabeth, hastily, “this is our cousin, Mr. Darcy. Mr. Darcy, this is Colonel Dunne, the regimental surgeon. Sir, please, will you explain the colonel's condition to him? I cannot. I have tried but I cannot.”

  
Colonel Dunne sat by Elizabeth, still inclined towards suspicion, and sketched out the matter with a great deal of Latin.

  
Darcy translated, “You are inclined to think the injury sustained at Quatre Bras to be the cause of the fever that has now made him insensible.”

  
“Aye,” said Doctor Dunne. “I blame myself for not having properly cleaned the bullet wound, or having a poultice to properly draw out the infection from the wound, or any kind of tincture to treat the fever. The infection, I believe, caused him no little pain Sunday, and made him clumsy in the melee. The fever by then must likewise have dulled his reactions.”

  
“Can anything be done to treat it now?”

  
“Not now. Perhaps we could have cut off the limb and saved him that way, but he sustained a laceration across the ribs at Hougoumont that likewise became septic. We cannot cut off a man’s torso. Medical science has not advanced that far.” He ran a hand through his short hair and turned to Elizabeth. “I am sorry with all my heart, Mrs. Fitzwilliam. I ought to have insisted on amputating Saturday.”

  
“You would have taken his sword arm before he set out to fulfill the most important orders of his career?” Elizabeth asked, her tears a little more under control. “Just because two bullet wounds were a little red? He would never have allowed it.”

  
“Is there any benefit to bloodletting now?” Darcy asked.

  
Colonel Dunne said, “There is no harm, at least.”

  
Mrs. Pattinson came in then, with a very modest repast, and a bottle of burgundy. No one felt much like eating, and Elizabeth was still crying so constantly she did not touch her meal, for fear of its becoming rather oversalted. Darcy watched her with an expression of mixed pain and compassion. He finished his dinner within five minutes of it's being put in front of him and, pushing his plate away, asked, “Mrs. Fitzwilliam, when is the last time you ate? When is the last time you slept?”

  
Elizabeth did not have satisfactory answers for either, and Darcy said, in a tone of gentle command, “Come, you must do both. I shall sit with Colonel Fitzwilliam until you are both a little recovered.”

  
“You have not even washed off the dust from the road!”

  
“Will you be so good as to ask your maid to prepare me a can of hot water, and loan me Colonel Fitzwilliam’s shaving kit? I assure you, that is all I need to be perfectly refreshed.”

  
This accomplished, Elizabeth wearily unpinned her apron and her long-sleeved round gown of dark blue muslin, took off her cap, and slept a few hours on a camp bed set up in her dressing room. Her maid sat at the door, picking apart a long traveling coat to dye black.

  
Elizabeth was never sure, later, what woke her: the noise of Mr. Darcy sending for Colonel Dunne, asleep in the sitting room, or her own maid kicking over her workbasket to run to the door, or if there was truth to the old superstition about soulmates knowing the moment of each others’ death. She only recalled sitting up abruptly, straining to hear what was happening; then flinging aside the bedclothes and stumbling into the sickroom while still pulling on her light summer dressing gown. Colonel Dunne and Mr. Darcy, looking drawn and grim, were by the right of the bed. Elizabeth looked to them for confirmation of what she already knew.

  
There are few things worse than tragedies which one expects and yet for which one resolutely refuses to prepare.

  
For some moments her mind rebelled and she refused, categorically, to accept that nothing more could be done. Mr. Darcy and Colonel Dunne were good enough to try what she demanded, but their work had no effect, and Colonel Fitzwilliam’s breathing grew fainter and more erratic.

  
She dropped almost fainting onto the camp chair on which she had passed most of the day and seized Colonel Fitzwilliam’s left hand in both her own. Her agitation was extreme and yet she could not find any way to express it, nor had she any idea what to do or what she be done. She felt she made a foolish, ridiculous figure sitting in a short-sleeved summer peignoir of diaphanous white silk gauze, her hair scandalously streaking unbound down her back, her left arm bare from her elbow to her fingertips, and yet could make no move to cover herself or get up to dress. To move would mean accepting there was nothing more to be done.

  
She pressed his hand again, vainly trying to chafe life back into it. “Please Richard, do not leave me. Dearest, do not make me live without you.” There was almost some response at this; Colonel Fitzwilliam turned his head slightly towards her. “It's me,” she cried, “it is Elizabeth— it is your Bennet. My dear—”

  
He seemed almost to know her; he pressed her hand in response and, when he had not sufficient strength to continue, his hand slid limply out of her grasp, brushing her bare left wrist, and then he was gone.


	11. In which Georgiana makes a discovery

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Liz for the idea about the family portraits! I have taken some historical liberties with the Duke of Wellington's schedule and the actual progress of the Royal Army Medical corps, which was not really established until the Crimean Wars, but hope I can be forgiven.

Though women technically were not supposed to attend funerals, no one said anything to Elizabeth as she sat in the back of Mont St. Jean, the Protestant church that that had already interred so many British officers, or when she walked out of it to the cemetery. They couldn’t really, not when she was leaning on the arm of the Duke of Wellington himself.

The Duke of Wellington seemed like a quote out of context, on foot and surrounded by fresh graves, instead of ahorse and surrounded by his glittering staff, but when Elizabeth looked, all the names on the wooden crosses and hastily carved stone were British, and familiar. Wellington was, in a way, still surrounded by his men. He looked grave and pained, as they walked over the fresh churned earth, and said, in a low, rough voice, “Thank God I don’t know what it is to lose a battle, but certainly nothing can be more painful than to gain one with the loss of so many friends.”

Elizabeth assented to this, but did not trust herself to speak more.

His Grace had said something very similar, when he called late Tuesday evening. He had not been surprised to hear Colonel Fitzwilliam had died, but he had been grieved by it, and told Elizabeth that though he was riding out tomorrow noon to chase Napoleon back to Paris, he was at her service until then, if she had need of him. Elizabeth begged the indulgence of His Grace's escort at the funeral the next morning. “I know,” she said, as he frowned, “It is not done, but please, sir; grant me this. If you will give countenance to it, no one will call it improper.”

Wellington had not been terrifically pleased with the request. “It will overset you.”

The violence of Elizabeth’s grief had then been beyond tears; she felt it bodily, almost as an ague, and she trembled even when by the fire, with a shawl thrown over the shoulders of her dressing gown. She could well understand why he thought she would faint, or go into hysterics, but a graveyard could contain no horrors worse than the ones she had already witnessed. “Not in the least, Your Grace. I was two nights at Hougoumont, just after the battle, and I did not faint. Nor did I faint or go into hysterics the nearly three years I was in Spain. I should more likely be overset if I remained at home, unable to do anything.” She had tried to smile, but she seemed, oddly, to have forgotten how to arrange the muscles in her face to achieve this; she ended up with an expression of great strain when she said, “I ended my honeymoon by following Colonel Fitzwilliam to Lisbon. I am not sure I could ever be easy with myself if I did not follow my husband to the very last.”

Wellington had regarded her with an air of mixed amusement and resignation. “You’re a rare woman, Mrs. Fitzwilliam. Very few women of my acquaintance would do so much.”

“We were soulmates,” Elizabeth had said, holding up her bare left wrist.

This, at last, had been argument enough; it was an open secret that the Duke and Duchess of Wellington were not a match, and had only discovered it when baring their wrists before the altar. He tended to be a soft touch before the evidence of actual matches, as a result.

When the last spadeful of earth had fallen, the Duke of Wellington turned from Elizabeth to speak in a low voice to Darcy. This surprised Elizabeth, for their initial meeting had not been entirely pleasant (two reserved men used to getting their own way, and under significant emotional strain, could not comfortably share so painful a task as planning a funeral; only Elizabeth’s bursting into tears and insisting on her own way had ended the tacit battle of wills). Darcy nodded stiffly. This seemed to satisfy the Duke of Wellington, who took Elizabeth’s hand from where it rested on his arm and kissed it politely. “Keep a stiff upper lip, Mrs. Fitzwilliam.”

“I shall do my best to obey you, sir,” said Elizabeth, with rather a sad little attempt at a salute.

His Grace took his leave, which caused a general exodus. Nearly all the men were known to her— Colonel Dunne had a surgeon friend with him Elizabeth did not know, and there were some officers of the Coldstream Guards and the Prince of Wales’s own whom Elizabeth had heard of, but never before met— and she thanked them all personally as they departed, headed onwards to France, or back to their own sickbeds. Colonel Kirke was the last to leave; he pressed her hand kindly and said, “My regiment is assigned to guard Brussels. No glory for us, as ever! But it means Beatrice will come sit with you, as long as you have need of her. She begged me to say that exact. You must give her good report of me when you return to your lodgings, for I am sure she is waiting for you there.”

Elizabeth thanked him more heartily than the others, in the hopes of keeping Colonel Kirke a little longer. She did not quite know what to do with herself when they were all gone. Walking away from the grave felt so painfully final.

“Shall I escort you home?” Darcy asked, when they were quite alone.

Elizabeth felt confused by the question. “Home?”

“To your lodgings in Brussels.”

She at last tore her gaze from the grave and said, “I have just realized sir— I do not know where I am to go.”

He looked puzzled; Elizabeth tried to wrestle her thoughts into some kind of order. “That is— home was wherever we were billeted, or in tents with the rest of the regiment. But the regiment is now perhaps... two companies? Out of the original six? Colonel Dunne was telling me yesterday that the highest ranking, uninjured officer is Captain Kearney. What is left of the regiment remains here. But I cannot stay with the regiment. I suppose— I suppose I will return to Longbourn?”

“I will certainly take you there, if that is where you wish to go. Or to your sister, Mrs. Bingley, if that is what you prefer.” Darcy then realized what she was confusedly trying to ask and said, “Ah. There was a copy of your marriage settlement amongst Richard’s papers. Though I am sure your father or the Bingleys will fight for the privilege of housing you, it is the legal obligation of the Fitzwilliams to provide you with a home, until you die or remarry. I think you will want to be with Lady Stornoway at this time, but if that displeases you, I am sure Lady Catherine would be more than delighted—”

Elizabeth surprised herself with a snort of laughter.

Darcy managed a wan smile. “Your sister Lydia can attest to how comfortable you will be at Rosings Park.”

“Oh yes, Lydia was so comfortable, she never entirely managed to leave again. Did you know her initial visit was only supposed to last three months?”

“I could have sworn your sister was there for six.”

“She was! And for a month every Easter thereafter, or Lady Catherine would refuse to fund Lydia’s Chinese voyage. You know, I am really quite astonished at the change Lady Catherine wrought upon her. Lydia scrimped and saved every last haypenny of her pocket money, and made up the difference between the cost of the trip and what Lady Catherine and I could pay out. I hadn't thought such a voyage possible for another year yet, but she sets sail....” Elizabeth trailed off. “What day is it?”

“It is the twenty-second.”

“Oh dear, Lydia sets sail tomorrow! How strange to think of Lydia embarking on her married life when mine is....” This was too painful a thought to complete; she changed the subject to, “I suppose it is expected I go to Matlock House?”

Darcy seemed unsure if she liked the idea and offered, “As a Fitzwilliam myself, I am happy to offer you a home. Georgiana would be delighted to have you always with her.”

This was tempting, but living with Marjorie, for whom Elizabeth had a very high respect, and in whose social resources Elizabeth placed a great dependence, was beginning to appeal. Marjorie would know every detail of mourning, of what could be done and what would need to be done, would gently steer from her the gazes and questions of the morbid, and allow her the condolences of the compassionate. Elizabeth talked confusingly of wishing to have the guidance of an older woman near her age, while being sensible of Georgiana’s need, but Darcy once again grasped what she was speaking around, rather than about.

“I understand; you would not wish to have someone dependent upon you at this juncture.”

“Not when I can scarcely depend upon myself to finish trimming a bonnet,” said Elizabeth, with a forced smile. Mrs. Pattinson had finished pinning black crepe to the hat Elizabeth was currently wearing after Elizabeth had dropped everything to the floor in order to sob convulsively. “Though do not think I make this choice because I do not feel great love for you and Georgiana; indeed, you are the dearest of my relations through marriage. It is only easier to hide behind Marjorie’s skirts at present.”

Darcy said, suddenly, “Elizabeth, know that if ever you wish Pemberley to be your home, you will be received there with alacrity. If ever you are in want of anything, now, or in future, you must come to me.”

“Darcy, you are too good a creature,” said Elizabeth, taking his hand and pressing it. This did not encompass the half of what she felt; she tried to strike at her feelings at an angle and said, “I am beyond grateful that I may rely upon you now, but I hope you will not run yourself ragged on my account. You must feel this loss as greatly as I do, if not greater. Richard was your cousin— your confidante from childhood. I can, I think, enter a little into your feelings—”

“I imagine not,” said Darcy, after a moment, in more agitation than she had ever heard from him before.

She looked over at him in worry. Elizabeth had never known Darcy to ever display his pain, and here now was a very great struggle for composure. His grip was still tight on her black-gloved fingers, his jaw clenched and his lips pressed together. Elizabeth had noticed in her husband, and in all the other Fitzwilliams, the tendency to bury deep— too deep for words— anything of which they were ashamed. She wondered how, in this age of sensibility, Darcy could be ashamed of tears, but was not surprised by it.

“Darcy,” she said, gently reaching up with her free hand, to touch his cheek. He went rigid at her touch, and squeezed his eyes shut. “Please,” she said, her voice breaking a little. “If you will not give _yourself_ the relief of tears, do it for my sake. Let me see that someone else in the world is in as much pain as I am.”

He crumbled at this; and they clung to each other in shared grief, too deep for all other expression.

 

***

 

After this conversation, Elizabeth noticed that Darcy only gave free expression to his grief when she was weeping on him. All the rest of the day he moved about with terse self-control. He must always be active, must always be doing; even when he was too tired to act, he was restless. Elizabeth grew to believe that Darcy would have run mad if he could not fuss over her when there was nothing else to do.

There was almost nothing Darcy would not do for Elizabeth when she found herself unequal to a task. He procured her black bordered paper and wrote the addresses of her letters when her grief-addled mind could not supply them. He helped her to divvy up what possessions Colonel Fitzwilliam had left to his friends amongst the regiments, and tracked down the lists of dead and wounded, so that Elizabeth could put away again what mementos could not be delivered. After Elizabeth sorted out the regimental papers and lists from personal papers, he, with the help of Colonel Dunne, passed them onto the surviving officers. Darcy would even have helped unpick her coats and gowns to dye them black, but this at least, she could do... albeit in twice the time it normally took her. She kept picking up her work and putting it aside again. Elizabeth had been at so high a pitch of tension, for so many days, that sustained concentration was impossible.

Mrs. Kirke and Mrs. Kearney most often sat with her, in a show of solidarity and alliteration. They were kind as they helped her chase down what black ribbons or crepe had not already been bought up. The aftermath of Waterloo had been beyond what any of them had seen; beyond even what the most hardened veteran had experienced. Nearly everyone still in Belgium was in mourning, or would soon be. The list of the dead grew steadily longer. When Mrs. Kirke said her brother expected the dead to amount to over twenty thousand men, Elizabeth said, “That seems low,” and both ladies agreed.

“I suppose they do not count the camp followers,” said Mrs. Kearney.

“Did you see the battlefield after?” asked Mrs. Kirke. “I confess, I was run off my feet with the number of wounded, and with the reports they brought, I did not care to go.”

“I saw Hougoumont,” said Elizabeth. “And we passed by the battlefield itself. I— I don’t think there was anything that could have prepared me....”

After a moment, Mrs. Kirke said, gently, “That is the hardest part of military life. No one can really understand, unless they have seen some of it themselves.”

Elizabeth nodded. “My cousin was so shocked when he first arrived, and saw the streets of Brussels being crowded with the wounded from Waterloo. He had never conceived of misery on so large a scale. Poor Darcy, I hadn’t the heart to tell him how much worse it got, the closer one went to Waterloo. It is already too far a cry from the civility of his part of Derbyshire.”

“Mr. Darcy is your cousin by marriage?” asked Mrs. Kirke, who had not much concerned herself with Darcy except as someone who could settle what business Elizabeth could not handle, by virtue of her sex. Darcy had seemed rather amused with this indifference.

“Yes. His mother and Richard’s father were siblings.”

Mrs. Kearney said, a little suspiciously, “He did not come, like the other English...?”

There had been horrifyingly enough, holidayers, who went to tour the battlefield, still thick, as it was, with the bodies of men and horses, as they might tour a grand estate.

“No,” said Elizabeth, quickly. “Good God, no. He came because I wrote to him, that is all.”

Mrs. Kirke nodded approvingly. “As you ought, though really, Colonel Kirke, or my brother Robinson would handle all the bequests and things if you had need of it. Though I suppose that neither of them could take you back to England.”

This was something Elizabeth had not fully resigned herself to. England remained static in her mind, all green hills and needlework by the fire. She herself was so changed— changed even from the person she was last week, when she had been hiding a yawn behind her fan, at the Duchess of Richmond’s ball— that she had trouble putting herself back in the old context of Hertfordshire or even London. “I am not sure how I will find England,” said she, haltingly, not sure how to express this. “After all I have... seen I mean, now and on my travels....”  

“Oh,” said Mrs. Kirke, thoughtfully. “I have been moved about so much, I tend to look on any stay as merely a long campaign. I cannot really conceive of being in one place _forever_. I have no very strong attachment any place, even Jamaica. Sometimes I think of it as a nice place to settle, for my color would cause no comment there, as it sometimes does in England, but my sister manages to do pretty well in Lyme.”

Mrs. Kearney said, dismissively, “England is horrid backwards. I do not blame Mrs. Fitzwilliam in the least for being cast down.”

“You think everywhere is horrid backwards,” said Elizabeth, attempting a smile.

Mrs. Kearney neatly pulled the lining away from an old riding habit. “It _is_ , in comparison with the Middle Kingdom. If it were not for Captain Kearney, I would never have left. I do not like how it is, that a woman must always be going where her husband goes.”

Elizabeth had no real other framework for how the world should be organized and said, flippantly, “I suppose I am grateful that England at least does not, like some parts of India, expect a wife to follow her husband into the next world— as one’s match necessarily means you are two halves of the same whole, and that life cycle must be spent entirely together. The graveyard was as far as I wished to go.”

“When do you leave for England?” asked Mrs. Kirke.

“In three days. We sail from Antwerp to Portsmouth, and from there it is only a few hours by carriage to Matlock.” She could not keep her composure and said, “Oh God. What am I to tell all Richard’s family—”

Mrs. Kirke gathered Elizabeth up in her arms. “Shh, shh. You tell them that your husband did his duty to king and country, as did you. And if they cannot understand, you will make your cousin take you to my sister’s. Her husband is in the navy; she can enter into your feelings.”

One of the miserable consolations of being in Brussels, at least, was the number of people who could enter into her feelings. The number of times she met some woman’s eyes over a length of black crepe, and saw a similar grief reflected there, grew too large to count. Even on the floor below there was another widow, a Mrs. Marietta Patrick. She had set up a vat of black dye and quietly offered the use of it to Elizabeth one afternoon, after Mrs. Kirke and Mrs. Kearney had returned to their husbands, and before Darcy had returned from arranging for the transport back to England of Colonel Fitzwilliam's horse. Tossing into the black waters some of the light colored muslins, purchased in Paris, when all thought of the future had run to questions of how to outfit herself to tempt her husband into starting a family, struck Elizabeth with a fresh wave of misery.

Mrs. Patrick took Elizabeth’s hand and said, in a voice of forced brightness, “It is dreadful hard at first Mrs. Fitz. Captain Patrick was my third Henry and yet this hurts as much as it did when I lost my first one.”

“How does one endure it?” asked Elizabeth.

Mrs. Patrick did not quite know how to answer this question. “One... does, my dear. One is usually numb for a while, until the shock has passed, then one begins to be miserable and angry, in between the periods of numbness, then one gradually begins to get used to a life as a widow.” She added, a little helplessly, “I usually don’t, for more than a year or two. I’m always feeling the itch to be remarried. I hope you do not think too badly of me for it.”

“I know it is vain indeed to think England’s notion of soulmarks to be true, but I have not yet shaken the idea that there is one person for whom you are intended, and that is it.” Elizabeth looked down at her left wrist. The black ribbon she had tied around her wrist that morning had loosened; the ‘Fitzwilliam’ there could be dimly glimpsed. “There was, between the colonel and myself, such a ready degree of understanding and sympathy, such an alignment of tastes and interests— I cannot think of any other man for whom I could have such an affection.”

“Now you do not,” said Mrs. Patrick, trying to be gentle, “but when you realize the colonel is gone and you can never have him again— why then you may realize you cannot bear another man the _same_ affection, but an equally strong affection none-the-less.” She paused a moment and said, consideringly, “You are too much a philosopher to think poorly of me for saying this, I think— but really, all I take my soulmark to mean is that I get on a vast deal better with men named ‘Henry’ rather than any other kind of man. Perhaps that is true for you?”

Elizabeth suddenly remembered Darcy’s objections at Huntsford and laughed. “I suppose there is some measure of truth in that. The cousin now staying with me, Mr. Darcy, was christened Fitzwilliam.”

“There you are,” said Mrs. Patrick. “The hardest part for me, the first time I lost a Henry, was giving myself permission to move on, when I knew I could have spent the rest of my life very happily with my first Henry. But the fact of the matter is that I no longer could. My first Henry was gone.”

Elizabeth knew she meant well, but could not find much in it to help her at the moment.

“Perhaps this is more helpful: when you are in mourning, you mourn not just your husband, but the person you were with him, and the life you had.”

This was true; Elizabeth admitted, “I was trying to say this to Mrs. Kirke earlier— the life I have known is completely gone. I cannot follow the drum. I will be in Hampshire or London, doing nothing with my time.”

“After Waterloo,” said Mrs. Patrick, staring at her hands, “that sort of a life sounds to me very good.”

“Did you go onto the battlefield?”

Mrs. Patrick nodded. “I dug my husband out of his infantry square. It... it shocked me more than anything else I have seen. The sheer scale....”

Elizabeth said, quietly, “Hougoumont was— was more than I can comfortably describe. The horrible fierceness of the French attack— the dedication of my husband’s regiment and the Coldstream Guards—”

Mrs. Patrick put her hand on Elizabeth’s.

After a moment, Elizabeth said, “Perhaps I am needlessly tormenting myself Perhaps I shall like being wrapped up in furs in old country houses, with my only vexations being the rain and the tea being too hot.”

“It might make a nice change,” agreed Mrs. Patrick.

They moved quietly to the vat and began taking out their blacks, hanging them over laundry lines stretched over a thick carpet of newspaper. The dye dripped down onto the headlines proclaiming the great victory of Waterloo. Elizabeth stared at a paragraph about Hougoumont until it disappeared under a spreading pool of blackness.

 

***

 

Elizabeth and Darcy arrived in Hampshire just an hour after the Duke of Wellington’s dispatch did. Though His Grace had sent it Sunday evening, it had taken MAjor the Honorable Henry Percy until late Wednesday to get to London, and then the missive that the battle of Waterloo had been won took greater precedence. In the ensuing celebrations, he was delayed finding a messenger for his second missive until Thursday evening. An ensign delivered the note to Matlock House first thing Friday morning, to a secretary of the Earl’s, who, in turn, added it to packet of letters to be sent to his Lordship by that evening’s post. It was two days for mail to come from London to Matlock— three if the packet was sent Friday, as the mail was not delivered on Sundays. A week and two days after the battle of Waterloo, at a late breakfast, the Earl of Matlock read aloud a letter from the Duke of Wellington to the four people there assembled: his eldest son and daughter-in-law, and his daughter Honoria and her partner, an invitation that had been the patient work of years by Lady Stornoway, and Colonel and Mrs. Fitzwilliam.

 _‘To my lord, the Earl of Matlock,’_ the missive read, ‘ _it is with great regret I inform you that your son, the honorable Colonel Richard Fitzwilliam, was grievously wounded on this day, the 18 June 1815, defending the Chateau of Hougoumont from Napoleon and his forces. Col. F’s success there most assuredly won me this day’s battle. I owe him, and yourself, a greater debt than can presently be repaid. I understand he is to be moved to Brussels, under the care of his wife. Should the worst happen, I assure you one of my staff will see to it Mrs. Fitzwilliam is returned to you in London. I have the honor to be, etc.’_

Elizabeth and Darcy stepped into the wildest confusion. The servants did not know where most of the family went after the Earl of Matlock had read his letter aloud, and it was only by luck that Marjorie stopped in the vestibule upon their arrival. She took in Elizabeth’s black pelisse and the band of black crepe around the arm of Mr. Darcy’s greatcoat, and said, in a tone of deep distress, “Oh God, he was only injured at Hougoumont, surely?”

Elizabeth had been crying off and on since Waterloo had been won, and now knew how to speak through her tears intelligibly enough. “He died a week ago today.”

Marjorie took her into her arms at once and begged Mr. Darcy explain what had happened; he was forced to repeat his account some four or five times within the hour, for no one could be brought to listen to him at the same time, or to listen with any degree of comprehension. The Earl sat as a man stunned, unable to speak. Lord Stornoway would not or could not accept what had happened, and continued to ask the same questions over and over. For the first time, Marjorie publically lost her temper at her husband.

“For God’s sake,” she snapped, still cradling Elizabeth to her shoulder, “can you not see that they are exhausted? They just buried Colonel Fitzwilliam and sailed from Brussels, after witnessing perhaps the most devastating battle of our times! Darcy, you will go to bed. Elizabeth, I will put you in yours myself.”

Lord Stornoway looked conscious and said, in a tone of utter bewilderment, “But Marjorie, dear— what am I to tell the children?”

“Nothing,” said she. “The children are at their lessons. They can continue at them until I am free to talk to them.”

“What am I supposed to do?” he asked, more helplessly still.

“You are to go with your father and make arrangements to bring in an attorney and settle what business of Colonel Fitzwilliam’s that Darcy could not from abroad.”

Lady Honoria was in a grief too deep for tears. She looked up at Elizabeth and said, “I know your habits too well Mrs. Fitzwilliam, to think you did not write letters to all of us when Richard died. Is there anyone you would like me to write to, on your behalf?”

Elizabeth tried to force her exhausted mind to think. The answer she found was not, however, appropriate to say before the Earl or Lord Stornoway. “Yes— will you come upstairs with me? I should like to make a list of those among your mother’s family who will need to hear from me directly, and who would not mind a letter from you.”

But, when they were in the bedchamber usually reserved for her use, Elizabeth left Marjorie’s side to press Honoria’s hand. “I think you are the only one who might know the name and regiment of the intimate friend Colonel Fitzwilliam had before he met me. I do not think they parted on good terms, for Richard never spoke of him, except to say that they were not a match. But if our positions had been reversed, I would wish to be informed.”

Of all the requests Honoria had expected, this was not one of them. She said, slowly, “I... yes. Yes. I can write to him. He was an assistant surgeon with Richard’s second regiment— I forget what that was. He was an ensign and lieutenant under Colonel Brandon, and then...?”

“He was a captain in the Coldstream Guards,” said Elizabeth.

“Ah, that’s right. Thank you. Our particular circles are small; it will not take me long to find his name and direction.”

Elizabeth had not known so much before, but was surprised that this news did not pain her. She felt a sort of dull relief that someone else was responsible for this difficult thing, followed by a brief flash of hope that there was someone else in the world who fully understood the enormity of her loss.

Marjorie said, “Why Lizzy, I had not expected you to be quite so modern.”

“Hertfordshire is but a half-a-day from London,” said Elizabeth. “We are not so very backwards. And you know, I did very sincerely love Colonel Fitzwilliam, for all that he was.”

For the first time, Honoria came up and embraced Elizabeth. “Oh God, Elizabeth, I am sorry.”

Elizabeth put her head on Honoria’s shoulder and wept, thinking, ‘if only you had believed me before Richard died!’ Hearing his favorite (or formerly favorite) sister finally calling his wife by her first name would delighted him beyond all power of expression.

“Do you prefer to write or to speak to him?” asked Honoria.

“I should be very happy to receive him,” said Elizabeth. “Colonel Fitzwilliam left some things for him. Not officially— just letters.”

“Tell this Captain Bennet, or whatver his name is that we will be in London for the season, as usual,” said Marjorie. “We will be in half-mourning then and able to entertain a very little; nothing more than small dinners. If he can come to Hampshire, we will of course be receiving any and all calls of condolence, though we cannot offer anything else.”

Honoria patted Elizabeth’s shoulder and said, “Of course. I shall leave you to Lady Stornoway and your maid.”

Mr. and Mrs. Pattinson had come with Elizabeth and Darcy from Belgium. Elizabeth, wanting in some small way to repay Mr. Pattison's kindness and care for Colonel Fitzwilliam during Hougoumont, had offered to take him on as a manservant. It would be a far more comfortable life than waiting to be assigned to a new reigment and a new officer, and the Pattisons had agreed with alacrity.

To have her own footman as well as a lady’s maid, when she would have no establishment of her own, was a fairly ridiculous indulgence, but Marjorie accepted Elizabeth’s explanation with as matter-of-factly as Darcy had. Mr. Pattinson now quietly brought up Elizabeth’s last hat box, and, seeing her once more sobbing in Marjorie’s arms, mentioned only that her horse and the colonel’s had been stabled, and that Mr. Darcy was anxious to know how she did before he retired himself.

Marjorie began taking pins out of Elizabeth’s hair, as she might have done for her six-year-old daughter, and said, “Oh _Darcy_! He takes on too much. Remind me of your name?”

“Pattinson, ma’am.”

“Thank you. Mr. Pattinson, be so good as to tell Mr. Darcy he is to go to bed at once. He might have a bath first, if he wishes. Oh, Mrs. Fitzwilliam will want a bath. Take care to alert the kitchen if you know where that is— I think you do, for you were the colonel’s batman, were you not?”

Mr. Pattinson nodded, looking very much like he might cry himself.

“Darcy will not go until he hears from me,” said Elizabeth, trying to discreetly blow her nose in her handkerchief. “Poor man, I have driven him mad with worry. Mr. Pattinson, be so good as to tell him it would give me no end of comfort to know that he is resting, after all the strain I have put him through.”

Mr. Pattinson bowed and departed.

Marjorie said, “Darcy exceeded even his standards of interference this week. I hope he was not too maddeningly officious towards you.”

“No; he has been everything good and thoughtful. The only real point of tension was when he was trying to hide from me some love letters of Richard’s I knew predated me, but then I snapped at him that I was well aware of my husband’s previous friendships, and if I could marry Colonel Fitzwilliam without being overset by such knowledge, I could bury him just as well, and Darcy apologized and let me sort through Richard’s desk myself.”  

“However did he know to fetch you from Brussels?”

Elizabeth gave a not very coherent account of her letter to Georgiana and all the consequences thereof. Marjorie was frowning through this, but that could also have been from the knots she was endeavoring to prize apart in Elizabeth’s hair, with the aid of only an ornamental haircomb. Elizabeth recalled her pet theory, that Darcy had long considered Marjorie his soulmate and given up the idea of marriage because of his enduring love for her, and wondered at its plausibility. Perhaps Darcy’s care of her had roused Marjorie’s jealousy?

But this was not the case, for Marjorie simply said, quietly, “Poor Darcy. He has not the talent of making many close friends; he seems to have latched onto you now Colonel Fitzwilliam is....”

“I do not mind, truly,” said Elizabeth, not entirely sure what she was accepting— Darcy’s friendship, or Marjorie’s saying ‘dead,’ or Darcy’s lack of social skills, or her own new position within the family.

But then came the maids with the copper tub and the hot water, and their confidences were temporarily at an end. When Elizabeth felt she had finally scrubbed off the last bit of sea spray from the Channel crossing, she was too tired to do anything more but give Marjorie the grubby letter Elizabeth had never sent her father, detailing the whole of the action at Hougoumont. “Perhaps you might shew everyone this. It is as exact account as I could make it of— of my husband’s last command. Colonel Fitzwilliam’s second-in-command gave me an overview of the action, and a number of the men and officers in the regiment were kind enough to tell me all they knew of the actions they themselves witnessed. I am not sure I can speak on....” Elizabeth tried to swallow back the last of her tears.

Marjorie took the letter. “My dear, you may rely on me. Sleep now. You have endured so much, you and Darcy. Let the rest of us take up your burdens a while.”

 

***

 

Elizabeth slept nearly two days, and would have slept longer if the Earl of Matlock had not insisted on waiting upon her. Supposing she owed him a direct account of his son’s last days, Elizabeth wearily rose and allowed herself to be dressed, in what had once been a morning round-gown of jonquil-colored French cambric, but was now the first of her Paris gowns turned to black widow’s weeds. (The black gowns and traveling costume she’d worn had been her very oldest clothes; Mrs. Pattison had locked away as many of Elizabeth’s Paris gowns as she could, insisting that they were too pretty to be thrown into a vat of dye.) To crown the whole, Mrs. Pattinson found a black lace mantilla, attached it to a small ebony hair comb, and settled it on top of the loose curls she usually pinned to the back of Elizabeth’s head.

“What’s this?” asked Elizabeth, disinterestedly picking up one of the corners of the mantilla, which hung near her elbow. “Do you mean to dress me as a flamenco dancer, to cheer me?”

“No, Mrs. Fitzwilliam.” Mrs. Pattinson stepped back to observe the effect. “I thought this would suit as a widow’s veil.”

Elizabeth stared at the intricate pattern on the edge of black lace veil, and tried not to cry.

Mrs. Pattinson said, “Your caps have always been mantillas, ma’am. You will want to feel a little like yourself still.”

“Wherever did you find this? I thought I had cut up all my mantillas into eighths and sewn them into caps—”

But then she recalled: this had been the present Colonel Fitzwilliam got her when she first stepped foot in Lisbon, to make up for how seasick she was the entire way there. It had been one of his first presents to her, and she had treasured it too much to do anything but keep it folded up in tissue paper. Tears stung at her eyes again. Elizabeth dashed them impatiently away and rose to speak with her father-in-law.

The Earl was more lost than she had ever seen him, but five minutes conversation helped him discover what he truly wanted: something or someone to blame other than himself.

Though he would never have said so aloud, now that his son was dead, he heartily regretted how he had treated Colonel Fitzwilliam. It had been His Lordship who insisted something was wrong with his son, His Lordship who had bought his son his first pair of colors, His Lordship who had, in ways great and small, made Colonel Fitzwilliam feel throughout his life he must always work tenaciously through even the worst pain, in order to be acceptable.

Elizabeth was still too heart-broken to be angry, but she felt that the dull seeds of resentment, first sown in her marriage articles, beginning to sprout. Only now that Colonel Fitzwilliam was dead, and there was nothing more to be done, did the Earl of Matlock ever consider how much he was to blame for his son’s unhappiness. Her own love, and eccentric view of the world had done much to heal those first, early wounds. But it was not easy to recover a rejection for things one could not help. She recalled the battles at the family dinner table, the marked lines of tension around Colonel Fitzwilliam’s mouth, the recollections that anyone else but Colonel Fitzwilliam could not make cheerful, Lady Catherine’s long story of how the family reacted to the appearance of Colonel Fitzwilliam’s soulmark— even, more recently, the ferocious battle over family portraits, and whether or not Miss Duncan ought to be included in Honoria's, as Elizabeth had in Colonel Fitzwilliam's, and Marjorie in Lord Stornoway's.

Elizabeth tried to talk of this, but found she could not. The feelings were too strong, and her own mind too dulled by shock, grief, and exhaustion.

Elizabeth offered the French to blame instead.

The Earl accepted this uneasily, and pressed her to account again for Quatre Bras and Hougoumont, particularly asking after what treatments had been offered to each of his son’s wounds. The first real flare of temper burned away some of her dullness, when she thought the Earl of Matlock would try and blame Colonel Dunne for what had happened— or even herself, for the lacks she could not supply from linen cupboards. With real passion she described the horrible conditions under which they had all labored, the lack of resources and doctors, the terrible air so thick with the smell of gunpowder and death it was no wonder so many wounds had turned septic, the lack of anything to wash with, even water. She dwelt with terrible relish on the well at Hougoumont, on the assistant surgeon’s admission that they had taken the bandages from the dead to use upon the living.

“And this is how they treat the men who save Europe?” cried the Earl.

“The medical service had been disbanded, sir,” replied Elizabeth.

“It is not a permanent part of the army?”

“It was in the Peninsula, but that was because of Wellington, not because of Whitehall.”

This news was perhaps the best Elizabeth could give him. The Earl could blame Britain for the death of his son, which in some measure eased the unacknowledged blame he laid upon himself, and gave him something to do. The Earl had always been political. To now campaign for medical reform amongst the armed services was his object, and he was able to lose himself in plans of this, in what MPs he would need to cultivate, what lords he would court, what experts to consult. It had the added benefit of being a project that would last the six months of his full mourning. He left the interview in much better spirits than his daughter-in-law.

Elizabeth knew politics, and followed them keenly, for they dictated— or at least, _had_ dictated— where she would be each campaign season, and what dangers she might expect. The creation of those politics she had somewhat understood, from her friendship with Marjorie and Mary Crawford, but the actual practice of it alternately bored and annoyed her. To dine every day with very stupid men who persisted in thinking they were very clever was not her ideal. Elizabeth was willing to admit that into every field of human endeavor there was a percentage of its practitioners who not only were bad at their jobs, but morally culpable for how bad they were at it, but the number of those men in politics seemed absurdly high.

Lady Catherine and Anne arrived just when family dinners had moved from silence and grief to political campaigning. Elizabeth was furious at the change. Even the arrival of Georgianna and the Bingleys (sans Miss Bingley, who was staying with Mr. and Mrs. Hurst in Bath), could not calm her distemper.

“Lizzy, you do not allow for differences in character,” said Jane, as Elizabeth paced her bedroom. “Your father-in-law surely suffers as much as you do, and grieves just as much, but he is not active in the ways you are active. He does not console himself with long walks; he consoles himself with what has always been the business of his life.”

“The business of his life— fundamentally misunderstanding all his children?”

“I did mean ‘politics,’” said Jane, a little helplessly. “Lizzy—”

“I am going for a walk.”

“At night?” Jane cried, but Elizabeth was already out the door, on her way to the pebbled beach right outside the lawns of Matlock. It did not surprise Elizabeth that Jane sent Darcy after her, nor did it surprise her that Darcy elected to walk silently with her, rather than try to reason with her, or take her back. When she finally did turn, he merely offered her his arm. Elizabeth took it. It was odd now, how they moved so often in accord with each other, how they fit into each others’ silences— but Elizabeth supposed this a symptom of having been through hell together.

Matters came to a head three days after Lady Catherine arrived. Lady Honoria and Miss Duncan, who generally soaked up most of Lady Catherine’s disapprobation, had grown tired of their allotted roles, and suddenly recalled some urgent business in London that must take them away for at least a week. It had rained, so Elizabeth was deprived of her usual exercise that morning. She had been briefly and politely shanghaied by the Stornoway children, who wanted to play at Spanish guerillas, as they usually did when Colonel Fitzwilliam was there. However, without the Colonel pretending to be a French scouting party, the game was not very pleasant, and Elizabeth kept involuntarily thinking of the charnel house that had been the battlefield of Waterloo and feeling dizzy and unhappy. The eldest Stornoway child was at an age where he was beginning to understand death; he stopped the game when he realized his younger siblings treated Colonel Fitzwilliam’s absence as they normally did, as his just being off somewhere in Europe and likely to return in the winter with presents, and tried, with difficulty, to explain that their uncle would not be returning. Elizabeth took the governess out from a window embrasure, where she was pretending to be a French encampment, and consigned the children to her care. Elizabeth did not want to explain again how so beloved a man was now no more.

Her spirits were already irritated but it seemed no room in the house was free of noise, or the Earl and Lord and Lady Stornoway and their various secretaries and employees crafting bills or discussing MPs. Even the library was no refuge— in it, Mr. Darcy was consoling Georgiana, and Elizabeth forced herself to remain and assist him. It was, in her mind, unquestionably the right and virtuous thing to have done, but it did fray her patience to the point she could not keep her temper at dinner.

Lady Catherine spent the soup course telling everyone at her end of the table how Colonel Fitzwilliam was a hero who had died for his country, and they should all be very, very glad of his making history this way, and how Mrs. Fitzwilliam’s displays of grief, though affecting, were not necessary.

Elizabeth privately thought that Lady Catherine was not necessary.

“It would do better,” said Lady Catherine, “if you comported yourself a little more stoically, Mrs. Fitzwilliam. It is now a month since the colonel gave his all for England. The news of Waterloo, and of the dear colonel’s part in it, is now spreading. I daresay my brother Matlock will begin receiving visitors in a day or two. He has but a limited window to capitalize on it—”

“I do not see that,” said Elizabeth. “My husband will remain dead. He will not unexpectedly surprise us at dinner tomorrow.”

Lady Stornoway called up from the end of the table, “Mrs. Fitzwilliam, Lady Catherine means only that since we have won Waterloo, most people will think that implies we need not tinker with the army. Our army beat Napoleon’s army, ergo, it is the better army and everything about it is better.”

“To that end,” said her husband, musingly, “I really think this "triage" you mentioned ought to be put aside. It is a French _tactic_ , almost. No Englishman will stand for it.”

“No, no, Stornoway,” said the Earl. “We must put it in so that our opponents have something to take out.”

Though this made sense, it also incensed Elizabeth. If Colonel Dunne had been forced to work on his own, seeing each injured man as he came in, half the regiment would have died of their wounds while waiting. She began to talk of her experiences, only for Lady Catherine to say, disapprovingly, “And a little less of that, if you please. You have always given your opinions very decidedly. I think that is a Bennet trait. Your sister Lydia did so as well, until I checked her most definitively. A struggle, that girl, but—” this very proudly “—I think too, my greatest triumph. She was utterly transformed when she went to China. Utterly. Spoke Cantonese and Mandarin, could quote the Five Analects, and manage a household on anything from fifty pounds to fifty thousand a year. And she became an absolute model of propriety.”

This was a gross exaggeration of Lydia’s accomplishments. Lydia spoke Cantonese and Mandarin _almost_ coherently, read about as much of the Five Analects as she read Shakespeare (which was not much), and only needed to add a column of figures three times to get the same number twice.

Jane looked warningly down the table. Elizabeth tried to swallow her anger with the soup. Lady Catherine had saved them a great deal of expense and trouble. One had to be grateful.

“Nothing will get done, Mrs. Fitzwilliam,” Lady Catherine continued on, “if an MP comes into the room and must bear with your sobbing like a heroine out of a sentimental novel. No conversation can be had. Nothing productive can come of it. But if they see you unbowed with the great weight of your grief, how much more will you be admired!”

Elizabeth was about to say something extremely impolitic when Darcy interrupted, “Lady Catherine, how are your orange trees? My gardener at Pemberley is having some trouble with his.”

Georgiana hastily agreed to this.

This thankfully distracted Lady Catherine long enough for Mr. Bingley to claim Elizabeth’s attention and involve her in a long, bland conversation on Hertfordshire— though, not long enough to keep Elizabeth from overhearing Lady Catherine say, “I had hoped from some real Spanish orange trees when the dear colonel was in the Peninsula two years ago, but he was unable to do so. A pity, really, for he was always so attentive in all other aspects.”

“I am so sorry that there was such hideous confusion about supplying your orangerie, Your Ladyship,” said Elizabeth. “This reprehensible carelessness must be blamed upon the pressure of circumstance, since we were then actively fighting the French— a fact which may, I fear, surprise you.”

Lady Catherine looked askance at her, but Jane hastily and loudly asked about Lady Stornoway’s children. This topic was seized with alacrity by most of the party, though it could not last long. Lord and Lady Stornoway, like most society couples, saw their children for an hour in the evening, and generally no longer. After they reported that their eldest was enjoying Eton, and the younger three were not unduly plaguing their governess, they had very little else to say. Lady Stornoway hit upon the bright idea of asking after the Bingleys’ only child, a charming little girl of one, named after her mother, and called Jenny. The anecdotes Jane and Bingley had saved up managed to take up the entire first course. But then came the curious looks at the childless Mrs. Fitzwilliam. Her miscarriage and her subsequent decision to wait upon starting a family were not topics Elizabeth wished to offer up as dinner table conversation, and so she took pleasure in turning any half-started sentence aimed at her childlessness into a question about little Jenny Bingley. Elizabeth talked at great length of her niece's proficiency at sitting upright and her veritable genius for chewing on anything within reach. But even this was not enough to keep Lady Catherine from what she did best: annoy Elizabeth into faking a headache.

A last remark about Colonel Fitzwilliam’s legacy, or lack thereof, caused Elizabeth to remove herself with the removes, lock the door against even Jane, and smash against the wall a very ugly, very expensive vase Lady Catherine had given her and Colonel Fitzwilliam as an anniversary present. Elizabeth took an unkind pleasure in grinding the dust into the rug as she paced.

The servants, of course, would have to pay for that fit of temper; when she awoke the next morning, she was properly apologetic, and gave the ‘tween-stairs maid, who cleaned her room, a generous tip.

This did not stop the ‘tween-stairs maid from telling Lady Stornoway’s maid that Mrs. Fitzwilliam had thrown a vase at the wall.

When Elizabeth was just trading her veil for her bonnet, Marjorie came running into the room. “Elizabeth, my dear,” cried she, still tying on her cap, “do you walk out this morning, like usual? I should be very grateful if you would allow me to come with you.”

Elizabeth grudgingly agreed.

They talked on indifferent topics until they were out of sight of the house, then Marjorie said, “Lady Catherine is a... trial, at times. She was, I think, attempting to be helpful to you, not trying to dictate how you experience so profound a grief.”

“Oh, I have faith in Lady Catherine’s capabilities,” said Elizabeth. “She was doing both.”

Marjorie sighed. “She was not wrong—”

“In how I might embarass everyone by grieving over the death of my husband?”

“No, no, not at all! Do not fly into the boughs with me. I only mean that we will soon get visitors, and most of them will not be calling to console with you, or to share in your loss. They will be calling out of curiosity.”

“Then I will refuse to see them.”

“My dear, you cannot. That is not how it works. You _know_ that is not how it works. And they will keep calling until they see you.”

“Abominable!” cried Elizabeth.

“Yes, but there is no changing it at present.”

“You do not know,” Elizabeth burst out, “what it is to lose your soulmate, the person whom you love more than any other in the world!”

“I do not,” said Marjorie calmly, “and I daresay I never will.”

This was odd enough to shake Elizabeth from her anger. “What can you mean?”

“If you will permit the intimacy?” Marjorie waited only for Elizabeth's unthinking nod to unclasp the jet bracelet about her left wrist. ‘Stornoway’ curled there.

“I do not take your meaning,” said Elizabeth. “Your wrist says Stornoway, you married a man who has been called Stornoway since his infancy.”

“But he will not be so called for many years more,” said Marjorie. “The courtesy title of 'Viscount Stornoway' means practically nothing, except that someday he be buried as the 'Earl of Matlock.' As Lord Stornoway he cannot frank letters, or sit in the House of Lords-- he only holds it because we decided, for some reason, that we cannot call the firstborn son of a peer 'Mr.' though in terms of actual benefits, that is about all he is. Really, my dear sister, the Duke of Wellington called you witty. Use some of those wits now. Do you really think my marriage a true match? Do you think it an equal one?”

Elizabeth hesitated and then said, “I think Lord Stornoway gained more by the match.”

“Lord Stornoway,” said his loving wife, “would accidentally walk into oncoming traffic without me. That is not to say I am not fond of my husband, or that I do not enjoy his attentions, but I can hardly respect him as an equal. And yet every external circumstance would confirm we are a true match. That is— I satisfy the _haut ton’s_ notions of an equal match; my father is Earl Spencer, and Stornoway’s father is the Earl of Matlock. My dowry matched his income. We are both political— or, well, I am political, and he has a political position. But I cannot recall the last time Stornoway had an opinion I did not give him, or was capable of carrying on a conversation on his own. Good Lord, without your husband and Darcy so frequently at Matlock House, my brain would have leaked from my ears years ago.”

Elizabeth did not know what to do with such information. She had long thought the affection between the Stornoways to be mostly on Lord Stornoway’s side, but she had always assumed this to be because Marjorie had married the wrong Fitzwilliam. Such proof to the contrary gave her a pang, because she had really believed her theory to be true. She put aside the question of ‘what lady with children does Darcy particularly admire’ to ask, “If you do not think that a soulmark necessarily indicates the person you were put on earth to marry, what do you think it is?”

“Mrs. Fitzwilliam, let me tell you something every lady in the Spencer family knows: your mark is but the name that will be recorded by future historians, when they are talking of your accomplishments.”

“The only accomplishment the Fitzwilliams required of me was being _Miss_ Bennet.”

“Yes, for the Fitzwilliams think a person’s soulmark refers to the person they are ordained by God to marry. There is only one, there can only be one, and they will know that person and that will be that! I really did you a disservice, not telling you all this before you married into this family.” Marjorie smoothed back a flyaway curl from her temple and said, “In all honesty, a soulmark is whatever you believe it to be. Just like any other external characteristic or marker.”

“I have read so, often enough,” said Elizabeth, “but when your family— nay, your _society_ tells you something often enough, you believe it.”

“Yes, which is why Colonel Fitzwilliam had such a difficult time with his inclinations,” said Marjorie. “What people tell you is not always right.”

“No,” said Elizabeth, with a sigh. “I wish you would not be sensible at me, when I wish to indulge in an excess of sensibility.”

“Please then, take what I say next in the light of a sister hoping only to do you a kindness. I think part of why your grief is so unbearable is because some part of you still believes in the Fitzwilliam line, that there is only one person in the world who can truly know your soul, and now he is gone. But my dear, look around you. Every single person currently in this house would gladly be your confidante. Why, your sister spent a week traveling from Derbyshire with a one-year-old child, to bear you company, and Darcy went to Belgium— well, partly in search of you, but partly because I think he knew what the colonel’s fever signified. Old Mr. Darcy died of a wound, a very trifling cut on the palm from a paper knife, becoming infected.”

Georgiana’s own ungovernable grief, and Darcy’s desperate need to be doing after Colonel Fitzwilliam’s death suddenly made sense. “I begin to see why everyone else’s grief is taking a different shape than my own. I suppose Lady Catherine was a model of stoicism when Sir Lewis died?”

“According to my late and unlamented mother-in-law, Lady Catherine did not shed a tear; she merely took a firm grasp on Rosings Park and refused to let go— not an insignificant accomplishment!”

“I daresay Lady Catherine would have prefered me to take a Spartan approach and report I told my husband to come back with his shield or on it, but, alas for us all, shields are no longer used in contemporary warfare. I understand her advice, but I cannot take it. Perhaps there are no such things as soulmates, perhaps the ‘Fitzwilliam’ on my wrist merely means I will get on best with people of that name, perhaps it is the name that shall go down in history— I do hope my witticisms to the Duke of Wellington will be put into some kind of anthology— but that does not change the fact that I loved someone and he is now gone. It does not mend a broken heart.”

Marjorie agreed to this and said, “But that still leaves you with one question: what do you do about that?”

“Cry, mostly.”

“How do you react to a death that could have been avoided?” persisted Marjorie. “Do you uselessly storm and rage and allow what happened to you to happen to someone else, or do you harness your anger, and do what you can to keep it from happening ever again?”

“I wish you would stop being logical at me when all I want is to be annoyed.”

“I know,” said Marjorie, serenely. “But Elizabeth, think how Darcy avoided falling to pieces when he arrived in Brussels. He knew the efficacy of the work cure I am now prescribing you. You will feel much better if you have something to do, particularly if it is actually useful.”

Elizabeth allowed herself a final sigh. “Oh all  right. I shall follow the party line.”

And she did make a sincere effort to be what the Fitzwilliams required of her, but everyone could tell it was not a natural fit. During visits she had often to excuse herself to cry or lose her temper in private, and she was of very little help in drafting letters or deciding how best to institute reforms. She could offer only her own experiences, and had some difficulty seeing beyond them.

The Earl moved from being ‘somewhat of a loss’ to ‘entirely at a loss’ of what to do with her, as July turned to August. He and all his children had ever sublimated their emotional toils into work; he could not conceive why Elizabeth could not, and why she found so little relief in what eased his own griefs so well. Elizabeth’s open, lively disposition was too foreign to his own for exact translation to be possible, and even Marjorie’s best explanations, and Darcy’s grave assurances that Elizabeth was managing her grief as best she could, could not entirely keep him from worry. His Lordship therefore invited Elizabeth’s parents and unmarried sisters to stay. Mr. and Mrs. Bennet came with Kitty within the week, and brought with them a letter from Mary, who was summering at the British Museum, where she was taking a course on Egyptology.

The letter was a masterpiece of extracts entirely unsuitable to the occasion.

“Mary is so learned,” cooed Mrs. Bennet, to the daughters assembled in her dressing room (Mr. Bennet had fled to the library at the earliest opportunity, and Mr. Bingley was keeping Darcy company). “I am sure she is of great consolation to you. Lizzy, you must make her a little present. I know your jointure is but a fourth of what your income was, but two thousand pounds a year! My dear, it is as good as if you were married still.”

“Is it,” said Elizabeth.

“Indeed, it is a sad thing, Lizzy, for the colonel was always so good, but now you are not always going here and there and all over creation. I daresay you will be very comfortable indeed. You need not run a household or do anything at all— what a lovely, idle time you will have of it!”

This prediction of her future life did not appeal, nor comfort. It nearly made the idea of politicking forever appealing. Elizabeth even began to hope of more callers, who at least could be contented with a rote summary of Hougoumont and a show of stoicism, instead of new and inventive exclamations of joy, as to her good fortune of being a rich widow.

Jane hastily rose and presented Mrs. Bennet with the only subject that would take her from Elizabeth’s fortunes: her only grandchild. “Mama, will you not take Jenny outdoors? You know she so particularly loves to hear you speak.”

Mrs. Bennet was thankfully distracted, and went down into the gardens, baby Jane and nursemaid in tow.

“And I thought she could not get worse, after she came out of your bedchamber exclaiming, ‘Mr. Bingley, I am so sorry!’” Elizabeth exclaimed. “The poor man nearly fainted, thinking you had died in childbirth!”

“Mama was hoping to spare me from my husband’s displeasure, for presenting him with a daughter instead of a son; that is not an unnatural response.”

Jane did not sound very invested in this defense, and surrendered readily when Elizabeth countered, “Oh, aye, Mr. Bingley’s displeasure! I am not sure he has ever been displeased with anything in his life. ‘Mildly annoyed’ is probably the worst emotion he has ever felt.”

Kitty added, “Georgiana said Darcy said Colonel Fitzwilliam had to be sent for smelling salts!”

Elizabeth blinked away sudden tears and tried to smile. “Oh yes, he was halfway out the door! Fortunately I was just behind Mama and could translate ‘Mr: Bingley, I am so sorry’ into ‘Jane has safely given birth to a baby girl as lovely as she is,’ and saved him the trouble or running off looking for Mama’s _sal voltaile_.”

“I wish Georgiana and I had stayed up for it,” said Kitty, wistfully.

“I am glad you didn’t,” said Elizabeth. “For then Mr. Hurst got out the brandy and cigars and all the men of the party were perfectly useless within an hour.”

This memory put her into a foul mood that not even a two hour walk could alleviate. It was difficult to admit, even to herself, that she was jealous of Jane: of her settled, happy life, of her husband, of her child. Elizabeth had liked following the drum, but began to wish her own life had been as safe as Jane’s was. This felt horribly disloyal. And yet— the world she had known was lost in shadow. She could take no pleasure at all in the usual games of the Stornoway children, her only real link back to military life, outside of letters. The horrible price of Hougoumont haunted her dreams; to continue on, seeing battles as ghastly or more so, made her shudder with horror. To be at home, to be in England was now her lot. Was it so wrong to wish—

Elizabeth sat down on a bench in the formal garden, hiding her face in her hands. And here was the seed of the ferocious anger that consumed her now: all she had expected of her life, all she wanted from it, had been robbed from her, through no fault of anyone's— no fault but the way her own country, the way England, where she would live forever after, chose to go to war.

And, perhaps worse was the realization that despite all this, her central wishes had not changed. She still wanted to have a partner, a true _match_ , with whom she could build a respectable life, one where she was useful, and active, in a way she enjoyed.

The person with whom she thought to accomplish this had been taken from her— and, thought Elizabeth, with a surge of irritation, his family was right. They had not valued him as they ought to have done, when he was alive, but now he was gone, they valued him enough to take on England and force it to change. This was her life now— not the settled quietness, punctuated by absurdity, of her country childhood, not the picaresque adventures of her married life, following the drum, but a continued fight, against a foe more intractable and more fearsome than even Napoleon.

It was too bad, she later thought, trying to look stoic and noble for the benefit of visitors society insisted were important— the same society that had determined the death of her soulmate necessary— that she should so hate the weapons allowed her.

 

***

 

Though she had been determined to content herself with her lot, a bad sleep and a half-remembered nightmare about Hougoumont left her feeling, the next morning, as if this determination was rather a poor choice. Duty had called yesterday, and spite had answered the door. It required such energy to be spiteful; she wondered how she would get on, on the days where she was tired, and could not harness her anger to plow determinedly through all the tasks she did not like.

Today she felt as if she would not like to find out. She stared at the bed canopy and said, in peevish accents, “Mrs. Pattinson, I do not mean to get up at all today. I mean to lay in bed and inconvenience everybody.”

“Very good madam,” said Mrs. Pattinson, “but there is Lady Honoria wishing to come in.”

Elizabeth thought it might at least distract her. “Oh alright. Tell her I refuse to dress. If that does not frighten her off, she may enter.”

Lady Honoria, fresh from London, said that she did not mind Elizabeth’s deshabille if Elizabeth did not mind her dust. This was agreed upon and Honoria took a seat on the edge of Elizabeth’s bed. Honoria had a little information on Colonel Fitzwilliam’s former friend, a Colonel Bennet (or Bénet, as he wrote it) Pascal, regimental surgeon for the Coldstream Guards. Elizabeth was startled at this; four companies of the Coldstream Guards had been under Colonel Fitzwilliam’s command at Hougoumont.

“Colonel Pascal is part of the Army of Occupation in Paris, but I wrote him that you would be at Matlock House, whenever he is next in England,” said Honoria. “I hope that was not too much of a liberty.”

“No,” said Elizabeth. “I am glad you did.”

“You look... unhappy.”

“Oh, yes, at the thought of remaining in Matlock House.”

Honoria grinned. “Knew you’d get there eventually. There’s a reason Isadora and I live near her people in Aberdeen, rather than in London, near my own, and my sisters moved as far away as they could. I really don’t know how Marjorie stands it.”

“Oh, it is easy for her to be the person Lord Matlock and Stornoway expect her to be. I am a cynic rather than a stoic, but it seems looking calm and noble is the only thing I can do to change what must be changed.”

“Or so my father has told you,” said Honoria.

“He is the one who can effect any change.”

“I suppose you are right in that; he is an old, rich man with a title. He can demand the world to conform to his standards and it does. The world would never be half so obliging if I demanded it to change. My own family certainly was not.”

Elizabeth had seen that, well enough. “Has it always been like this, among your family?”

“Ever since Richard’s mark appeared.”

Elizabeth drew her knees to her chest and folded her arms on top of them. “I suppose I ought to have guessed that one. Richard always put a pleasanter construction on events than the facts could support, but I picked up enough. He never spoke of it outright, but he believed he ruined his family.”

Honoria looked bleak. “Oh Richard. The poor, noble idiot that he was. Did he ever...?”

“He never said as much, but it was hardly difficult to see, based on how consciously and constantly he acted the peacemaker, and with what unthinking acceptance he agreed to even the most insulting articles of our marriage settlements. He never expected good treatment from any of his immediate family, nor did he think he deserved it, unless he earned it. All Richard wanted was to be conventional, to be acceptable to his family and society, and to find once again the structure and support his family so abruptly ceased to give him.”

“A wife, a family, and a profession, according to Sybil.”

“Sybil said rightly.” Elizabeth felt tears rise to the surface again. She was so tired of crying. “I still bitterly regret I did not give him children. We were trying but I— we thought it better not to have a child during the Spanish campaign and then, we hadn't enough time before Waterloo.”

“You gave him a measure of peace,” said Honoria, leaning against the bedpost. “I wish I had seen that sooner. For my part, I am sorry for how I... how I treated you and Richard.”

“I took from you your one ally among your siblings. Of course you would not approve of me.”

“I do now,” said Honoria, quietly.

Elizabeth managed a half-smile and moved her left arm to stare at her wrist. She did not like to think that the name on her wrist meant only three years of settled happiness, and perhaps forty or fifty years of being a stoic widow. This was not what she wanted; she still wanted a partner and a home of her own and children. She wished she'd had them with Colonel Fitzwilliam and hated that she could not.

But if the desire still remained— but then again, no. Her mind shied away from this like a horse seeing an unexpected branch. Her life, from here on out, would be something dictated by the Fitzwilliams— though perhaps that was the meaning of her mark? The Fitzwilliam family would shape her life more than any other group of people on earth? She was sharing this idea with Honoria when Georgiana peered in.

“Georgiana!” called Honoria. “Elizabeth and I were just having a comfortable coze. Come sit with us.”

Honoria meant this as a show of affection, but it came off as the sort of unthinking officiousness that Elizabeth had noticed in the Earl, Lord Stornoway, Lady Catherine— and even both Darcy siblings, from time to time. Elizabeth tried to smile through her temper and said, “I warn you Georgiana, I am in a mood today, and refuse to dress or rise from my bed.”

“Oh, then Lady Catherine will not come in,” said Georgiana, relieved.

“I doubt _that_ very much indeed.”

Georgiana sat by Honoria and looked at Elizabeth’s bare left forearm with a troubled expression.

“Have you never seen another person’s soulmark?” Honoria asked.

She had seen George Wickham’s, of course, but thankfully, Georgianna replied instead, “Kitty and I showed each other ours last year, before the season, so we might be on the lookout for each other. Is it always a match? I mean, last name to last name and first name to first name?”

“It was for me,” said Elizabeth, staring at her mark. “Colonel Fitzwilliam's said ‘Bennet.’”

“I suppose it depends who you ask,” said Honoria. “Our family usually insists on exact matches. I do not know if Darcy ever told you, but your parents had each other's last names.” She loosened the leather archery cuff she wore, in lieu of ribbon or bracelet and shewed to Elizabeth and Georgiana the ‘Isadora’ curling neatly over her wrist. “See? It's all rot, my dear.”

“All rot?” Georgiana demanded.

“Why yes. This was useful in that my family was forced to accept Isadora as my companion, but I loved quite a number of women _not_ named Isadora before I found Miss Duncan.”

Georgiana looked bewildered at this news. She expressed, confusedly, that she had never doubted a soulmark referred to the person you were ordained by God to marry.

“Soulmarks might not mean what we always think they mean, that is all Honoria means,” said Elizabeth, in too bleak a mood to check her less appropriate remarks. “I, for example, cannot believe God marked me for three years of happiness and no more. I cannot believe that is what my mark signifies. And yet— I am so afraid I am right about it. I loved Colonel Fitzwilliam, and he loved me, and we were— we were, I think, a good couple.”

“That does not go away because you have changed your thinking on what a soulmark is or what a soulmate is,” said Honoria. “That is not a comment on Richard’s preferences, by the by. If anything, it’s a comment on how radical my circles are, or how staid the family is. I have friends who have more than one soulmate at the same time— stop looking shocked Georgiana! Marjorie’s aunt,  _your godmother_ , the Duchess of Devonshire, had the most famous _menage-a-trois_ in England!”

“Did she?” Georgiana asked, weakly.

Elizabeth declined to comment on this, and Honoria said, “Yes— though perhaps I will not get into that at present. You know, Marjorie has a notion I think is quite right. I think you are so angry, Elizabeth, and making yourself so unhappy because you cannot settle for yourself two contradictory notions: one, that soulmarks do not necessarily refer to the one person, ever, in the world, who will make you happy, and two, that if this is necessarily so, it means the person and relationship you are mourning was not what you thought it was. If the first is true, it does not necessarily mean the second is also true. Perhaps you chose to marry my brother based on a logical fallacy, but that does not lessen what you had. After all, even _I_ came to realize there was a very deep affection and esteem between you. You should have seen the letter I wrote to... you know who about you.”

Despite the pain of having her innermost self laid so bare (and before Georgiana too, for whom she was supposed to set a good example!), Elizabeth realized this was a necessary bloodletting. Or at least, she said as much, when she was walking with her father the next day. Their relationship had been oddly strained since Colonel Fitzwilliam’s death. Mr. Bennet wanted to quip her out of her misery, and Elizabeth had reacted to it by bursting into tears. They had thereafter avoided doing much more than talking of books. This discussion of philosophy was the first time they felt once more at ease with each other.

“Ah, Lizzy,” said Mr. Bennet, “I am forced to admit that, once again, I have been a neglectful father. You were married while still clinging to an idea I tried most heartily to disprove to you— inadvertently by example.”

“I know, but it was hard to shake when my own experiences seemed to prove it,” said Elizabeth.

“Have you read any Olympe de Gouges, Lizzy?”

“No. I have heard of her, but never read her. A French Wollenstonecraft, is she not?”

“Yes. She has a very helpful treatise on how European society does women a disservice by insisting they take the name of their supposed soulmates upon marriage. It eradicates their own selfhood, and causes them to think their own lives at an end when they are widowed.”

Elizabeth winced. “A hit, sir, a very palpable hit.”

“You are much more than merely a colonel’s widow,” said Mr. Bennet, patting her hand. “Once you figure out what all that is, the Fitzwilliams can be brought to see it too.”

“Once again forcing _me_ to do the work, Papa?”

“I am, but only because this is work that only _you_ can do.”  

They were walking on the beach, where Georgiana and Kitty were more-or-less watching Lord and Lady Stornoway’s children play in the waves, and a small army of nursemaids were watching Georgiana and Kitty.

Elizabeth looked pensively on this scene and said, “Did you ever decide what the Jane on your wrist meant?”

“No,” said Mr. Bennet. “Nor do I think I ever shall have a definitive answer.”

“I hate living in ambiguity.”

“I fear, Lizzy, that that is the human condition.”

The beach was crowded that day; they came across Mr. Darcy, throwing a stick of driftwood into the surf for one of the Earl of Matlock’s Newfoundlands. Darcy seemed more at ease than he had in some time. The work cure that did so little for Elizabeth had worked wonders for him. And, too, the wholehearted and unspoken animal sympathy of a well-trained dog did as much good as Elizabeth's tears, Jane’s understanding ear, or Bingley's compassion, in expressing sympathy for all that was deepest felt and least spoken of— and Elizabeth had a guess that a mute listener, who could neither understand nor respond to the words Darcy so searched for, was exactly what Darcy needed, to manage his own grief.

“Darcy,” called Elizabeth, “who is your friend?”

“This is Boatswain,” said Darcy, wresting the stick from this eager fellow.

“I am surprised you do not call him Sampson,” said Mr. Bennet. “I have never seen a stronger fellow more in need of a haircut.”

Darcy smiled and tossed the stick into the sea, to Boatswain’s utter delight. Newfoundland dogs in general seemed to be as happy in water as on land, and Boatswain in particular was mad with joy to be in the sea.

“Is this one of the puppies Mr. Tilney gave to His Lordship last summer?” asked Elizabeth.

“I believe so,” replied Darcy.

“I cannot believe it! He is grown so large!”

Boatswain droolingly presented the stick to Darcy, with a great splash of sea spray. Elizabeth was hard put not to laugh. Darcy ruefully brushed some of the damp off his waistcoat and said, “It is now over a year since you and Richard had the Tilneys to Matlock; it is no very great surprise Boatswain should be full grown now.”

This reference did not pain her, and Elizabeth wondered at it— though she did not long have the chance to do so.  A larger wave than normal knocked over Georgiana, Kitty, and their charges, and from the way the children and their nursemaids up the beach shrieked, this was a disaster worse than the sack of Badajoz. Darcy at once flung off his coat (Elizabeth hastily grabbed it) and dashed into the water, the Newfoundland cheerfully bounding after him. Between them and the nursemaids, everyone was quickly saved from what dangers lurked in four inches of seawater. The nursemaid ran their charges back to the house, in such a panic that everyone from one-year-old Jenny Bingley to ten-year-old Spencer Fitzwilliam became convinced they had been two seconds away from drowning. Darcy’s immediate concern was Georgiana, who clung, spluttering, to his left arm, looking quite surprised, but not in the least injured. Kitty had to make do with the dog.

Mr. Bennet’s assistance was only a laconic, “Dampening your petticoats, Kitty? You are three years behind the fashion.”

“I did not mean to do it,” said Kitty, pushing her bedraggled hair from her face.

“You rarely do, Kitty.”

Quite suddenly, a greater danger emerged: Lady Catherine, who insisted sea-bathing was greatly improving Anne’s health. (It was not.) A grand cavalcade surrounded Anne de Bourgh’s bathing excursions, for Lady Catherine had purchased a bathing machine which was the bane of the servants’ existence, and insisted it be driven into the water every day at precisely two in the afternoon. Elizabeth could hear the protests of horse and coachman, as the machine began rattling across the beach.

“Oh _no_ ,” cried Georgiana.

Mr. Bennet’s lips twitched. “Yes, I think our hour is up. Lady Catherine will not appreciate the latest fashions as we do. Lizzy, will you see the young ladies indoors, for a change of clothing? You may wish to bring Mr. Darcy with you as well. I shall take charge of the dog, and stave off Her Ladyship’s displeasure.”

As Georgiana, Kitty, and Darcy were all damp and smelled strongly of wet Newfoundland, this seemed a good idea. They did not like to think of the lecture Lady Catherine would give them on the subject of improper (even if it was inadvertent) seabathing. They scrambled up the beach.

Elizabeth and Darcy brought up the rear, with Darcy clasping his left wrist with his right hand, looking mortified at the new transparency of his white shirt. Elizabeth averted her eyes as she passed over his coat.

He pulled this on at once and said, with an air of obvious embarrassment, “I apologize—”

“Oh what for? Darcy, you need not be so terrifically embarrassed.”

He did not appear to believe her.

“You have seen me twice in my dressing gown. Your shirtsleeves will not make me faint.”

Darcy bowed, too polite or too embarrassed to directly contradict her, and took the steps nearly two at a time up to the terrace and back into the house.

Georgiana looked extremely troubled. “Twice?”

“Once at Colonel Fitzwilliam’s deathbed, once—”

“—during Mr. Wickham’s visit,” said Kitty. “I remember particularly, because you didn’t even have on a nightcap and I felt very sorry indeed I did not try harder to warn you, Lizzy.”

Georgiana burst into tears.

“Whatever is the matter, my dear?” asked Elizabeth, a little concerned at the oddness of this reaction. “Did you hit your head when the surf got you?”

“N-no,” said Georgiana. “But I— I think I did not realize something that was... odd about that evening, until now.”

“ _Really_?” asked Kitty. “What about that was normal?”

“Nothing,” choked out Georgiana.

Elizabeth was extremely worried Georgiana had realized what exactly Mr. Wickham might have done to her, but instead Georgiana said, “Mr. Wickham kept calling my brother ‘Fitzwilliam,’ which no one generally does when Colonel Fitzwilliam is there, for it gets— it got too confusing otherwise. It was so odd, and I marked it especially that Mr. Wickham was calling my brother by his Christian name, but I was so frightened I did not really think long on... oh! My poor brother! How wretched an evening! How much he has suffered!”

“It wasn’t a good evening for him, no,” agreed Elizabeth.

“He must have been so miserable!”

“I am sure sending Mr. Wickham to Australia was a decent consolation.”

“Wickham knew!”

“Wickham did know your brother’s soulmark, yes,” said Elizabeth, not entirely sure why Georgiana was upset. “He.. needed to, in order for his blackmail attempt to actually be blackmail and not just random guessing that would have no effect.”

Georgiana was sobbing. Kitty looked awkward and frightened and said, “Georgiana— I do not understand you. Why are you upset about Mr. Wickham _now_?”

“I did not understand until now,” sobbed Georgiana. “Oh, I have been so blind, I have so increased my brother’s misery without meaning in the least to do so—”

Elizabeth took Georgiana in her arms. “I know my dear, it was an insufferable presumption on Mr. Wickham’s part, calling your brother by his Christian name. Mr. Wickham was trying to remind your brother of their past intimacy, to give proof to his threats. But he is gone these three years—”

“Three years!” wailed Georgianna.

“I really thought that would make you feel better, not worse.”

Kitty took Georgiana from Elizabeth and said, “Georgiana, let’s go in and change. I am sure you are not feeling at all well because you were knocked about by the waves and your dress is all damp and gritty.”

“It is not that....” Georgiana looped her arm around Kitty’s waist, and Kitty returned the favor, as they walked slowly up the terrace, their heads bent together. At the top of the steps, Kitty cried out, “Good _Lord_ , really? I cannot believe it!” Georgiana shushed her, and they proceeded into the house.

Mr. Bennet had by then caught up with them, a very damp, panting Newfoundland at his heels. “What on earth was that about, Lizzy?”

“I have no idea,” said Elizabeth. “I suppose we shall have to live with the ambiguity.”

 


	12. In which Mrs. Fitzwilliam's political career is gone over

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With thanks to KiralaMouse for the idea of having Caroline Bingley bring up Elizabeth's muddy petticoats before the Duke of Wellington.

By September, everyone had grown thoroughly tired of each others’ company and began to talk of going home. Elizabeth could not repine the loss of her mother, who continued to try and cheer her with thoughts of jointures and the pension and prize money owed to war widows, but it distressed Elizabeth to think of being without Jane. She felt as if she had not really talked with Jane, and had squandered all their chances of doing so.

But every time they were alone, and Elizabeth wished to in some way unburden herself, she found she could not. Happy Jane, with a healthy child at her breast and doting husband at her side, was so far removed from the horrors Elizabeth had seen and experienced, it seemed impossible that the two should exist in the same universe. Elizabeth grew horribly frustrated with herself. Was it merely jealousy that stilled her tongue? Was there actual concern for Jane, or merely bitterness that Jane had everything Elizabeth still wanted? Was it possible for Jane to understand even the shape of Elizabeth’s losses? In one of her bitterer moods, Elizabeth had almost said this, but cut herself off after “Jane, you cannot possibly understand—” and contented herself with, “I am glad you cannot. I may be able to repeat what I saw at Hougoumont with some degree of composure, but that is because I leave so much out of the retelling.”

Very near the end of the Bingley’s stay at Matlock, Jane proposed to make her own rose water in the stillroom. Marjorie found this odd, as she had always considered the stillroom something the housekeeper went into, not something the ladies of the house would ever deign to meddle with, but granted their request nonetheless.

Elizabeth almost felt at ease as she cut roses with Jane. They had spent so many late summer evenings doing the exact same thing at Longbourn, there was a thick patina of nostalgia over the whole, encasing the whole action in an uncomplicated happiness.

“Was it only last summer we were picking roses at your house in Paris?” Jane asked.

“Not my house, Jane; the house where we were billeted.” The air was thick with the scent of roses; Elizabeth let it close over her, as if retreating under a blanket from the cold. So protected, it did not pain Elizabeth to recall last summer, at looking up from her task to see Colonel Fitzwilliam leaning against the doorway to the house, smiling softly at her, and teasing her with allusions to French fairy tales.

“Even in little things,” said Jane softly, from the other side of the rose bush, “your life is so different from my own—but Lizzy, if you correct me, I will remember. I may not have experienced all you have, but I can imagine, and I can sympathize.”

Elizabeth wanted to give Jane the confidences she sought, but did not know where to begin. She attacked the rose bush with renewed energy instead.

Jane was too gentle to show her disappointment, but not adept enough a liar to conceal it. She bowed her head to hide her expression and moved onto the subject that had interested them both since the end of August: “What do you suppose Georgiana and Kitty are plotting? For my part, I really do think they are writing a novel. It is the only thing that might unify the odd, disconnected questions they have been asking.”

“What sorts of questions?”

“Yesterday they were all agog to know how Charles and I knew we were a match, and if we had any doubts, and how we resolved the notion that we were a match when there were so many Janes and Charleses in the world. Today they wanted to know if a person could have more than one soulmate.”

“Those are disconnected questions?” Elizabeth asked. “They seem to me to be rather connected. And it is natural they should wonder; I am afraid Honoria and I were rather frank in our philosophic discussion of soulmates before Georgiana, and she has now shared it with Kitty. They are neither of them very... keen on philosophic inquiry, so such serious questioning of received wisdom has disturbed and startled them. Thank heaven I did not tell them of the Spanish tradition of thinking your soulmark the name of the saint you must pray to for assistance. They would by this time have struck up a correspondence with an archbishop as to the doctrinal import of this, and been excommunicated.”

“But before that,” Jane persisted, “they were asking how common it is for people to remarry. They know none, and that could not have to do with me or with Charles.”

“What did you tell them?”

“That it was common enough, if a person thought they had been mismatched the first time around.”

“It is commoner than that,” said Elizabeth, thinking of her neighbor in Brussels, Mrs. Patricks. “I think our own circles are overly nice in their requirements for matrimony. I know one lady who has made a habit of marrying ‘Henry’s. I cannot blame her; it seems a more interesting hobby than needlepoint or watercolors. I do _hope_ they are writing a novel; it might persuade them onto a course of deeper reflection than either of them have hitherto known.”

Jane agreed to this and, after wrestling with herself a minute, said, “Lizzy— I know I have never been as clever as you or Papa, and I daresay I haven’t a tenth of the intelligence of Lady Stornoway, but... but I do not think I am deficient in understanding.”

Elizabeth upset her basket in rushing over to Jane, who was pale, and had fixed her watering eyes on a point on the horizon. She took her sister into her arms at once and cried, “Jane, dearest Jane, you must not think that! I am not silent because I think anything wanting in _you_. It is only because I have no emotion worthy of being shared with you. You would not understand because all I have seen is so alien to the goodness in which you surround yourself, that is all.”

Jane held Elizabeth tightly. “Nothing that is yours is unworthy, however you may think. Tell me, Lizzy. I have gone through childbirth; you cannot cause a worse pain that that.”

Elizabeth closed her eyes against a rush of tears. “Jane, you must have heard my account of Hougoumont. I have given it some two or three hundred times.”

“Yes, but I do not know how you feel about it.”

“Furious.”

Jane looked startled at this.

“I am so angry, Jane,” Elizabeth burst out. “I have seen the worst of the world and yet I am supposed to go on pretending as if it hadn’t affected me, as if I haven’t been changed by all I’ve seen. I am supposed to push down every natural feeling for the sake of a family that never properly valued my husband while he was alive, and a society that required the death of the person I loved most in the world in order for it to continue on as comfortably as before. I am so angry and so unhappy and yet I— if I could go back in time, knowing what I do now, I would still marry Colonel Fitzwilliam. I loved and was truly loved and that is worth any pain— and yet, feeling as wretched as I do, sometimes I doubt it. How can I doubt it? And how can my own wishes, for a partner who respects and esteems me, for children, for a respectable life, be unchanged? And how can I bear to have these wishes still, when only one of the three is now possible?”

“Oh my dear Lizzy,” cried Jane, and burst into tears.

They wept together for some time, but when Elizabeth was at least calm enough to speak, said, “And I must confess to you that even the respectable life Richard left for me, and that Papa ensured for me in my marriage articles— a life spent with the Fitzwilliams, seems so insupportable. I am a wretched creature, to complain about a very safe and comfortable life, where I have ice in summer, flowers in winter, and French wine at every meal, but I would cast it aside without a second thought if I could starve and slog through the mud with Richard once again. And I know that it is impossible. The life I have enjoyed is gone and gone forever. The life I _have_ is so good and yet...!”

Jane cradled Elizabeth to her breast, and said, “Oh my dear Lizzy, I can do something there, at least. I will insist upon your staying with me this summer. If you like it better in Derbyshire than in Hampshire, then you must come and live with me.”

“Oh Jane, I could not impose.”

“Impose?” Jane cried. “How could it be an imposition to always have with me one of the people I love best in the world?” She kissed Elizabeth's hair and said, firmly, “I am your elder sister. It is my duty to look after you. You would not have me be derelict in my duties because they bring me pleasure? That is too Puritan a thought.”

Elizabeth laughed through her tears. “Oh Jane, you are too good a creature!”

“I am selfish,” said Jane, in perhaps the first real lie Elizabeth had heard her utter. “I want my favorite sister. Is that so wrong?” When Elizabeth did not immediately answer her, Jane added, “If you think all the very natural feelings you have shared with me are wrong, so too is the one I just shared with you. And so is this one: I cannot love Charles’s sisters as I love you. I have tried, but there are times, Lizzy, when I would give just about anything to have you at the breakfast table instead of Miss Bingley!”

Kitty, seeing her sisters having hysterics in the rose garden, came out armed with everything she thought might be of use. Her pockets overflowed with handkerchiefs and smelling salts. They welcomed her into their rather tearful, messy embrace, a gesture that Kitty met with more alarm than gratitude.

“What on earth is the matter?” Kitty demanded, quite bewildered.

“I am sad my husband is dead,” said Elizabeth, “though that reduces something of bewildering complexity to such simplicity it feels almost like a lie.”

“Lizzy,” said Kitty, after a moment, “I know you are sad, but I do not think you will always be so. You would not be sad if there was someone else who loved you. And you know, there _is._ ”

Elizabeth smiled through her tears, and held tight both her sisters. “Oh Kitty, I do not know what I did to deserve such sisters! How glad I am for you both! Your loves go a long way to consoling me for the loss of Colonel Fitzwilliam’s.”

Kitty looked harassed, but bore the weeping of her elder sisters with tolerable good grace. “Oh... oh well. I love you too Lizzy. But I am sitting on a basket and it is not very comfortable.”

Jane and Elizabeth released Kitty, who still seemed to think her elder sisters had run mad. Jane tried to explain, “Do not be too alarmed, Kitty; I am happy that Elizabeth will come stay with me this summer, but sad at the circumstances that lead to it.”

“You will both be in Derbyshire this summer?” asked Kitty, consideringly. “Will you be in London this winter?”

“Oh, I shall be,” said Elizabeth, grimly. “I intend to see this bill passed, or throttle an MP or two myself.”

“I must to Derbyshire,” said Jane, regretfully. “We had meant to make a number of improvements on the estate and properties while we were gone, but the work does not seem to get on without Bingley there. We hope to come to town after Easter.”

Kitty contemplated this and said, a little abruptly, “Then... perhaps Georgiana might visit me at Longbourn for some of the winter. I know she and her brother go to Pemberley for the fall, but I think... if you and Mr. Darcy are in London this winter, Lizzy, the Gardiners could bring Georgiana to Hertfordshire at Christmas.”

“What are you and Georgiana up to?” Elizabeth asked.

“We are learning to knit,” said Kitty, a response so absurd that Elizabeth and Jane finally laughed away the last of their tears.

 

***

 

The Fitzwilliams moved to London in January, for the opening of Parliament, taking Elizabeth along with them. Almost the first day they were at Fitzwilliam House, Mr. Pattinson came to the handsome sitting room that Marjorie had given over to Elizabeth’s private use, and said that a Colonel Pes-kull, or somesuch, was come to see her.

“Who?” asked Elizabeth, bewildered.

“A regimental surgeon, madame,” said Mr. Pattinson. “He gave me his card— hold a moment, I shall find it again.”

“Oh, it is probably a friend of Mrs. Kirke’s, or her brother’s,” said Elizabeth. She set aside the christening gown she was making for her Aunt Gardiner (now expecting her fifth child) and tried to brush out the wrinkles in her black bombazine gown. “I suppose he must bear a letter from her. Show him in, and have some tea sent up.”

This did not sit entirely right with Mr. Pattinson. “Receiving a gentleman alone, Mrs. Fitzwilliam?”

“I sit with Mr. Darcy alone often enough.”

“That,” said Mr. Pattinson, fishing in his trouser pockets, “is different, ma’am.”

“Because of the Newfoundland?” Elizabeth asked, rather impishly. By September Boatswain had decided the only greater joy in life than running into the sea was following Darcy from room to room, and the Earl had made a present of Boatswain to Darcy. It was difficult to say whether man or beast was better pleased with the arrangement. The coachmen certainly weren’t. It was not an easy thing transporting a large, slobbery Newfoundland from Hampshire to Derbyshire and then from Derbyshire to London.

“Because Mr. Darcy is family,” said Mr. Pattinson, disapprovingly. “This gentleman is unknown to you. A member of the family ought to be present. Ah! Here it is.” He handed over a calling card reading ‘Colonel Bénet Pascal, regimental surgeon, Coldstream Guards.’

Elizabeth stared at it a moment and said, “Very well. Would you see if Lady Honoria is free?”

Lady Honoria and Miss Duncan arrived just before Mr. Pattinson showed in a dark-haired, nearly handsome man in his late thirties. Colonel Pascal was in looks and manner very clearly a doctor, and one of the better classes of doctor to boot. He looked as if he should be wearing a black coat in a Harley Street examining room, speaking softly and kindly to a society lady of the benefits of sea bathing for nervous complaints. That was not to say he looked ill at ease in his uniform. Indeed, he wore his gold braid and sword as Elizabeth wore her diamonds— with a sort of muted pleasure and self-awareness that though it had not been his idea to put it on, he knew the decoration became him very well, and he was proud someone had seen fit to bestow it upon him. He greeted Lady Honoria and Miss Duncan first, and then turned to look at Elizabeth.

“Pascal, this is Elizabeth, Richard’s widow,” said Lady Honoria.

“Mrs. Fitzwilliam,” said he, with a little bow. Elizabeth curtsied, with the vague feeling she had curtsied to him before.

Honoria cleared her throat. “I... I think you will want to speak in private; Dora and I shall be by the fire, if you have need of us.”

“Please, will you sit?” asked Elizabeth, gesturing at the chair on the opposite side of her work table.  

Colonel Pascal perched straight-backed on the edge of his chair, an act that somehow combined nervousness with good breeding.

Before he could speak, Elizabeth said, suddenly, “I have seen you before, I think. In Belgium.”

He inclined his head and said, with heightened color, “I had no idea you would be at the interment madam, or I would never have dared—”

“Oh no,” said Elizabeth quickly, “I technically was not supposed to be there. If I hadn’t appealed to Duke of Wellington less than five minutes after my husband died, I really doubt he would have yielded to my entreaties. And I know very well it was only his being there that allowed me to go. So extraordinary a circumstance could not have been predicted. You must not think so meanly of me, or apologize— or if you must apologize, only do so for not introducing yourself to me at the interment. It would have saved Honoria some trouble.”

“I think it was trouble she was glad to have,” said Colonel Pascal. Then, uncertainly, “I beg your pardon, I am... I suppose, having seen you commandeer the Duke of Wellington so you might attend your husband’s funeral, I ought not to have been surprised you would like to meet me. The more ridiculous dictates of society do not govern you. But....”

“But Honoria’s letter surprised you?”  

“Since receiving such an extraordinary communication, I have been... _bouleversé_ ,” said he, delicately— though Elizabeth already could not imagine him doing anything _crudely_ ; even his amputations must be as quick and graceful as a haberdasher cutting silk. “I was surprised to hear from Lady Honoria, surprised indeed at the contents of her letter, surprised again you would have any desire to meet me, and shocked that you should actually receive me.”

Elizabeth hastened to assure him she had greatly desired his visit and, added, “I did not ask you here to demand answers of you, I just....” She felt tears stinging at her eyes. She took a moment and said, in a tone of forced composure, “If our situations were reversed, I would have wished to hear from you.”

Almost involuntarily, Colonel Pascal put his hand upon the table, near hers. “I confess, when I saw you at the interment I had a wish— a very unworthy wish— to make myself known to you. You see—” this he said with great difficulty, and a hint of an accent, in the pronunciation of his vowels “—I hold myself in some way responsible for Colonel Fitzwilliam’s death. I am the regimental surgeon for the Coldstream Guards. I could have gone to Hougoumont, but I chose to send one of my assistants in my place. Only four companies were at Hougoumont, after all; the other six were engaged elsewhere.” His hand trembled a little on the table. “I ought to have gone, I know I ought— I heard from three other surgeons a joke, what they thought a good joke— that Colonel Dunne was so understaffed he’d enlisted the officers’ wives as stewards. I ought to have known Colonel Dunne would not therefore go to Hougoumont. He would not risk the lives and honors of so many respectable ladies; he would set himself up a decent distance from the battle and wait for the injured there.”

Elizabeth hesitantly put her hand over his and said, trying her best to ignore the tears streaming down her cheeks, “Please, there was nothing you could have done; Richard died of septicemia, not any immediate injury.”

This did not cheer Colonel Pascal. “I have... a talent,” said he, haltingly, “or I suppose a reputation— any patient I personally attend has a greater chance of recovery without infection than nearly any other surgeon in the army. It is one my family has enjoyed for generations; my mother’s father was Abraham Bénet, chirguin to King Louis XV. I highly doubt it is an inherited ability, merely inherited method.”

“What do you mean?”

Colonel Pascal hesitated and asked her if she knew anything of Jewish custom; she admitted she knew only that one of Marjorie’s friends, Mrs. Cohen, did not serve meat and dairy at table at the same time. “There are certain rituals,” said he, “about what one does when touching that which is unclean. My grandfather taught me to wash away the impurity with vinegar, before and after each surgery. To this I have added washing the wound itself in vinegar. The scent is so strong, it keeps away the miasmas that bring fever.”

Elizabeth did not know what to say to this, but talked of the Earl of Matlock’s new ambition, to establish a corps of medical officials, as there were corps of engineers. It was impossible for Colonel Pascal to be cheerful in such circumstances, but he at least grew interested in such an idea, and, after offering some suggestions of his own, promised to think over any further proposals and write them to Honoria.

They lapsed into silence and Colonel Pascal asked, “Is this why you wished to see me, Mrs. Fitzwilliam? I am of course happy to be of any service to you or your father-in-law in this regard.”

“Partly,” said she, glancing at the door, to make sure it was closed. It was. Elizabeth moved her embroidery hoop, revealing the stack of letters she had taken from her writing desk, and pushed them across the table.

Colonel Pascal caught them and looked down at them in disbelief. “ _Putain_! Oh, pardon me, Mrs. Fitzwilliam. I am only... surprised. Again. He kept these? And you...?”

“I thought I ought to return them,” said Elizabeth. “I am afraid that I looked through some of the letters, to be sure I was returning the correct ones. I tried not to read them, but I could not help noticing that the last time you wrote to each other was 1810. I met Richard in 1812. I can hardly be jealous of a relationship that ended two years before I knew Richard existed.”

He looked down at the letters, and ran his thumb over the length of black velvet ribbon in which Elizabeth had bound them.

“I have not... offended you, I hope?”

“No,” said he, slowly. “Only surprised me. I keep coming back to that word, though it does not encompass what I mean to say at all.”

“You may tell me whatever you like.”

Colonel Pascal made a soft noise, almost a laugh. “I hope you will not be too distressed, Mrs. Fitzwilliam, when I say that I came to see you because I was curious. Very ill-bred of me, I know. It is only that I never believed that Richard could like a woman as well as a man. I was inclined to think it one of his many social shields, to prevent him from being utterly crushed by his family’s disappointment and disapproval. We ended things because I insisted I was right, and he ought to admit he was an invert, and make his family accept him as one. He claimed better self-knowledge and would not. There was no compromise to be reached. But I was shocked to see the depth of your grief, and the respect that it engendered in no less a person than the Duke of Wellington, who has more reason than most to be skeptical of soulmates. I began to doubt myself. When Honoria— _Honoria_ , whom I’d heard of as one of our most outspoken campaigners for equal rights— wrote to me saying her brother’s much beloved widow wished to meet me, I— I cannot tell you what I thought.”

“You can,” said Elizabeth. “I am not missish.”

He cleared his throat. “I beg your pardon in advance, all the same. I suppose— I imagined a society match, the sort that had always tempted Richard. Not a true one.”

Elizabeth began to see why Colonel Fitzwilliam had felt happy about his soulmark only after meeting her. Feeling a little offended she said, flatly, “I can assure you, sir, that was not the case. I very deeply loved my husband, and he loved me.”

He looked rather ashamed and said, “I know how shamefully I have been in the wrong. I have been writing to Honoria, and thinking over all I—  I see now, that Richard did not need to, nay _could not_ compromise on his own identity; all he was asking, of me, and of everyone else he loved, was to be accepted for _all_ he was. And not... feted or fussed over, per say— just to be a normal, unremarkable part of his family and his society once again, as he had been before his mark appeared. And I am heartily ashamed— so heartily sorry— that I can never apologize for so injuring Richard. _You_ never doubted his inclinations.”

This sounded more like a statement than a question, but Elizabeth said, firmly, “No, never.”

“Nor found them... distressing?”

“No.”

“Nor—”

“I loved my husband as he was,” said Elizabeth. “That is it and that is all.”

Colonel Pascal’s smile was wry, and a little sad. “I am quite glad you married Richard, then. I think you made him happier than he felt he had a right to be.”

Elizabeth could not respond to this, but tried to dash away her tears to do so.

He moved his chair to be beside hers and said, in what was evidently his best bedside manner, “I beg your pardon, Mrs. Fitzwilliam, I see you loved him just as much as I did— perhaps moreso, for you actually understood and accepted who he was, unlike myself.” He coughed. “If you will forgive the impropriety, Mrs. Fitzwilliam?”

“Of course.”

He pulled back his sleeve to reveal ‘Ricard.’

Elizabeth undid the ribbon at her wrist and showed him the ‘Fitzwilliam’ there.

“Yours was a more exact match,” said Colonel Pascal, comparing their marks. “No errors in translation. We always justified it to ourselves that I would be Bennet, not Bénet in Hampshire, where he was born, and he would be ‘Ricard’ in Roussillon, where I was.”

“Did you flee the Revolution, then?”

“Yes, though, as I was only five at the time, I do not much recall it. Though in general Napoleon has been kinder to my people than any English king, my grandfather was too much at court to be popular with the French peasantry. When I saw Roussillon again, at the end of the Spanish campaign, I recognized precisely nothing.” He stared at the ‘Fitzwilliam’ at her wrist. “If it will not distress you, Mrs. Fitzwilliam, I should like to call upon you again, to discuss the Earl of Matlock’s reforms. I am in England until March, giving medical exams to all the new recruits at the Guards’ headquarters in London.” He looked awkward. “As long as....”

“His Lordship... expected you existed, but has no notion what you were to Richard, or what your name actually is. I think if we pronounced your name the French way, there would be no....” Elizabeth hesitated and then supplied, “My father-in-law has a very specific image of Richard he wishes to preserve. He will very determinedly fail to notice anything that contradicts it.”

Colonel Pascal offered her a sweet and fleeting smile. “I had always gotten that impression.”

 

***

 

To her surprise, Colonel Pascal’s company made the interminable discussions of wording and phrasing, and initiatives to push or let fall much easier to bear. He knew Elizabeth’s world of mud, tents, and drumbeats, but could more deftly and easily package it for the Fitzwilliams to slot into their rigid narrative of clauses and subclauses. He brought to them medical officers who had long wished for reforms, professors of medicine who could speak to new technologies and trainings, the members of Whitehall with whom he interacted, and whose importance must be flattered if such ideas were to actually be implemented.

In some ways, Elizabeth thought, Colonel Pascal would fit in much better with the Fitzwilliams than she did. But there was no use in thinking about it. She and Colonel Fitzwilliam had chosen each other, rather than anyone else. They had all made their choices, and all accepted what they could and rejected what they could not.

Elizabeth admittedly struggled to accept all she could, but began to feel as if she was really shaping something important and useful. The actual practice of politicking, outside of bill writing, was as dull and aggravating as Elizabeth had found it to be that summer and fall. There was such hedging, such flattering, such trading— and yet so little progress made— perhaps a line changed, or a single vote secured.

Darcy, at least, hated it as much as she did. She was frequently unguarded in her remarks to him when he visited or dined at Fitzwilliam House. (Though Elizabeth was now into her seventh month of mourning, and could permissibly wear greys and purples, and go out into the world, she still, stubbornly clung to her gowns of black crepe and bombazine, and refused to dine anywhere but at home.)

Though Elizabeth had somewhat feared her need of Darcy’s company was far greater than his want of her own, Darcy seemed to seek out her company with increasing frequency... especially since Georgianna was behaving very oddly. She had spent Christmas with her brother at Pemberley, and was spending all January with Kitty, at Longbourn. Mr. Bennet had agreed to bring Miss Darcy to town in late February, as he had already committed himself to going to town with Mary, who had been accepted to another course (this time in archeology) at the British Museum. Mr. Bennet did not pretend to understand why Georgiana, who had always wintered in London, should wish to be in Longbourn when the cold weather rather negated all the benefits of the country; he was inclined to think this visit one of the absurdities of close female friendship, mixed with the Darcy habit of wishing to have one’s own way even— or especially— when it was inconvenient. Mrs. Bennet insisted her husband was wrong and that the country was a vast deal pleasanter than the city in any season, and that, after two seasons of London, of course Miss Darcy would wish a nice long, restorative lease in the unspoilt hills and meadows of Hertfordshire. Elizabeth was inclined to believe her father on this point, as— judging by the number of worked slippers, embroidered handkerchiefs, and horribly ugly knitted scarves that were almost daily sent from Longbourn to Darcy House— there could be no amusements to tempt Georgiana to Hertfordshire.

Darcy had a different interpretation of the overabundance of accoutrements he now possessed: Georgiana was not bored, she was merely trying to show how productive and accomplished she would be if she was always in the presence of Kitty Bennet. Ever since leaving for Longbourn, Georgiana had been asking to have Kitty stay at Darcy House for the season. Though Darcy almost always acquiesced to Georgiana’s demands, he held firm in his repeated refusals. It did not fit his notions of propriety for his household to be comprised of merely himself and two young ladies, without a female chaperone.

“Or because you do not want to endure twice the talk of lace without a guard?” asked Elizabeth, dryly, when he had come to call on her one frigid, late January afternoon.

Darcy, leaning with his arm on the mantle above the fire, cleared his throat, but could offer no better defense. Boatswain, lolling adoringly at his feet like a living hearthrug, made soft, cozy grumbling sound, as if in agreement.

“Whatever happened to Mrs. Annesley?”

“She is now Mrs. Grantley.” Darcy looked slightly amused as he crouched to rub Boatswain’s upturned belly. “I had meant to give Mr. Grantley a hint Georgiana would not make a suitable mother to his children, as they were her own age, but before I had finished offering him port, he informed me he was carrying off Georgiana’s companion instead. They were obliging enough to wait to marry until the end of June, when the Bingleys could take Georgiana to Matlock.”

“Oh, I am very sorry I did not send her a wedding present,” said Elizabeth.

“It would be unlike Mrs. Annesley— that is, Mrs. Grantley— to resent you for it, given the circumstances.”

“Have you any thought of finding Georgiana a new companion?”

Darcy grimaced. “I suppose I must. Though Georgiana was very upset by Colonel Fitzwilliam’s death; I cannot think she will wish to be much in society. Perhaps I will suffice as a chaperone this season.”

Elizabeth remembered Darcy’s earlier troubles with Mrs. Younge and understood his reluctance. She offered a sympathetic grimace.

Darcy addressed Boatswain for a moment, and when the dog had obediently rolled over and had gone to sleep, asked Elizabeth, “And are you enjoying your own stay at Fitzwilliam House?”

“There is a reason,” replied Elizabeth, “that someone as meek as Georgiana categorically refused to live here, and prefered her own establishment. That is not to say it is not very comfortable. It is far preferable to have meat and claret at every meal instead of salt beef and tea boiled in a cauldron over a campfire. It is only that everything here is a performance. I do not like being a stoic widow, but they are so dreadfully _disappointed_ when I am not.”

Darcy looked at her consideringly and said, “You are not, I think, the sort of person to dwell upon your grief forever.”

“No,” Elizabeth admitted. “And I am a little ashamed of it. I am... to be quite honest, Mr. Darcy, I do not know what I am. I am not stoic. I still feel terrifically blue-deviled at times, and I will always miss Colonel Fitzwilliam, but I am so _tired_ of crying.”

Mr. Darcy said, after a moment, “It sometimes feels to me like learning to jump over a missing stair that cannot be repaired. I know all is not as it should be, but....”

“There are times when you are grown horribly accustomed to it, and no longer notice it,” agreed Elizabeth. “Is it that a good thing? Is it not? I can hardly tell. It _is_ , and that is all I am prepared to acknowledge.” She leaned her elbow on the arm of her chair, and her cheek against her hand. “Oh, it’s a wretched business. I wish grief was something tidy and timely, like I have always been lead to believe. Six months of deepest grief, then six months of resignation, and then a lifetime thereafter of perfect cheerfulness. Or, as Lady Catherine and my father-in-law would have it, a year and a day of perfect stoicism. How are _you_?”

To her surprise, Darcy smiled.

At her bewildered look, he said, “I had a letter from Bingley this morning.”

“Are he and the Janes well? Are the renovations are progressing apace?”

“Yes to both. And Miss Bingley is engaged.”

Elizabeth’s arm slid off her chair in shock. “And not to you!”

“She was determined,” said Darcy, “but I was moreso.”

Elizabeth laughed. “Good God, Darcy, that _is_ worth a smile! Do we know the gentleman in question?”

“No, I don’t think so. She met him in Bath— a Mr. William Elliot, a widower, and cousin and heir to Sir Walter Elliot of Kellynch.”

“Have you met Sir Walter then?”

“Yes, and his eldest daughter, Miss Elizabeth Elliot. We were introduced....” He considered it. “When did we meet in Hertfordshire? Was it in the fall of 1811 or 1812?”

“1811.”

“Then I had the displeasure of dancing with Miss Elliot at Almack’s, and at several private balls in the spring of 1811.” He turned from Elizabeth to pick up the poker and stir up the fire. “It is rare that a man in my station in life is looked down upon as a social inferior, but so it was with Miss Elliot.”

“What was your crime?”

“I am not a baronet.”

“Oh dear,” said Elizabeth, lips twitching. “That is a heavy crime indeed. I wonder she did not inform the nearest magistrate.”

“By virtue of being a magistrate of Derbyshire myself, I suppose she did manage to do so.”

“I hope you were very severe with yourself!”

“I certainly asked myself some very searching questions after enduring her company for an entire season.”

“Too lenient by half,” said Elizabeth, leaning back in her chair. “Poor Darcy! Plagued by rude Elizabeths, all that year. One condescended to you all spring, the other was impertinent to you all fall.”

“I vastly prefer the second Elizabeth whom I met that year,” said Darcy, still prodding the fire.

“Have a care, Darcy! You have just given me licence to be impertinent to you forever.”

“Four years of it has done no harm. In fact, it improved me considerably.”

“So be it then! I shall tease you until one or the other of us dies.”

He seemed to be smiling at the fire. “You may regret so lasting a promise.”

“Perhaps, but I have just sworn it before a magistrate; I cannot renege on it now.” Then in a more serious mood, she added, “You must tell me if I _do_ plague you unduly. I take such comfort in your society; I would not have it be otherwise for you.” But, as she knew Darcy could be easily made uncomfortable with displays of affection, Elizabeth immediately changed the subject to the opening of Parliament, until Boatswain pawed at the door to be let out, and Darcy returned home.

 

***

 

Elizabeth reported the news of Caroline Bingley’s engagement to Marjorie and Mary Crawford the next day.

“No!” exclaimed Marjorie, with dismay. “A William Walter Elliot just bought the rotten borough of Meddleford. I need his vote!”

Mary was surprisingly vexed by the news. “I thought Mr. Elliot was courting _Anne_ Elliot.” For Elizabeth’s benefit, she added, “The second daughter of Sir Walter, and a fellow inmate of ours at the Bath Seminary for Young Ladies.”

“You do not think it a true match, between Miss Bingley and Mr. Elliot?” asked Marjorie, in a tone of put-upon shock.

“I think Mr. Elliot has been unkind to Anne, one way or another. Pray, what was the name of his first wife?” It was the work of quite half an hour to find some old letters from Anne Elliot, which confirmed that Mr. Elliot had been unhappily married to a woman rich in both pounds sterling and first names. She had thirteen of them, including both ‘Anne’ and ‘Caroline.’

“Well, we are no closer, then,” said Mary, frustrated. “I cannot blame Miss Bingley for securing a man with such good prospects, and indeed, I applaud her for it, but I only wish it had not come at the expense of Anne. Everything seems to come at Anne’s expense.”

“It seems to me a stroke of fortune for your friend,” said Elizabeth. “This gentleman’s character does not hold up under even so mild a scrutiny as three ladies consulting an old letter.”

“I cannot think him a sensible man,” agreed Mary, “if he should profess to like an Anne Elliot and then instead marry a Caroline Bingley.”

Marjorie had been rifling through her desk, and withdrew some notes on the new crop of MPs she hoped to cultivate. “I meant to invite Mr. Elliot to a dinner at some point. I suppose it shall have to be sooner than I intended. I do not want to see the new Mrs. Elliot fighting for precedence when going into dinner. Merely imagining it puts me off my tea. I do not think I could eat a whole dinner after actually seeing such a display.”

Mary laughed delightedly. “Oh Marjorie, you _are_ upset! I have never heard you say such a thing aloud.”

“I usually just think it,” agreed Marjorie, sourly. “But after having successfully avoided Miss Bingley all last season, I am extremely vexed I should have to take notice of her.” Marjorie tore some paper to bits, which seemed to restore her to equanimity, and began to write names on them and arrange them around a sheet of paper meant to represent a dinner table. “I suppose there is nothing to be done for it. Mr. Elliot will marry Miss Bingley. At least we may have the excuse of mourning to give only small dinners, no balls or parties, and never dine with them again, after the initial invitation.”

Mary was still too disgusted on behalf of her friend to happily cede this first point. “What advantages does Caroline Bingley have that Anne Elliot does not?”

“A fortune of twenty thousand pounds?” suggested Elizabeth, reading Marjorie’s notes. “Mr. Elliot received four hundred and three votes in favor of his becoming the MP of Meddleford... which is two hundred and thirty-seven people more than currently reside in Meddleford. It must cost a great deal indeed to raise the inhabitants of the churchyard to cast their ballots. I am pleased to see so democratic a man has taken power.”

Mary grimaced over the paper slips. “Marjorie, dearest, what are you doing? If one was forced to use this dinner party as a representative sample of English citizens, one would be forced to conclude that the male sex ought to be exterminated for the good of the race as a whole. What are you about?”

“Winning,” said Marjorie. “Also, that is very cruel to Mr. Darcy; he is less stupid than most men.”

“But more censorious. I stand by my first assessment.”

“Well, this will change your opinion.” She finished one last slip of paper and slid it over. “What do you think of my guest of honor?”

Mary picked it up and snorted. “The Duke of Wellington? I think you should set a chair out for Elijah instead, like Mrs. Cohen does at Passover. You are far more likely to get an ancient Israelite than the Duke of Wellington. He is only in England a month, for the opening of Parliament. He has been deluged with invitations.”

“Yes, which is why I have thrown precedence to the wind, and seated Elizabeth on his left,” said Marjorie, calmly. “Oh dear, that will upset Lady Catherine. Best not to invite her.”

“With such an inducement as one of England's many war widows, the Duke of Wellington will of course attend,” said Elizabeth, but Marjorie chose not to accept this as sarcasm.

“He will.”

“Marjorie, really, do not make _me_ responsible for securing you the most sought- after guest in London!”

“You do not recall,” said Marjorie, placing Miss Bingley far from Elizabeth, “how he said the entire battle of Waterloo hinged upon my poor brother-in-law barring the gate of Hougoumont?”

Elizabeth replied, dryly, “As your poor brother-in-law is now buried not five miles from that gate, I doubt he can tempt the Duke of Wellington to attend a dinner party in London.”

Marjorie continued on unperturbed. “You do not think he will at least feel intrigued by the idea of seeing the widow of the man who won him Waterloo? The widow he personally escorted to her husband’s graveside, in defiance of strict propriety?”

“A widow still wearing full mourning?” Mary asked.

“Mary, after all the awe and adulation, you do not think the Duke of Wellington is eager to sit next to a pretty, witty woman whose bombazine and blacks declares she is not and cannot be in pursuit of him? One who will give him a well-informed discussion about military tactics? You know as well as I do that His Grace has no coherent conversation about anything but the battlefield.”

Mary scanned the paper scraps and asked, “Are you inviting the Duchess of Wellington, my dear?”

“Of course,” said Marjorie, “but it is _such_ a pity she promised to attend Mrs. Willoughby’s ball that evening. I believe it is a promise of long standing.”

Mary laughed suddenly. “Why did I ever doubt you? Marjorie, you are a marvel! What _shall_ he choose? The jealous squints and continual, fussy inanities of the Duchess of Wellington and her friends, or the fine eyes and finer wit of Mrs. Fitzwilliam?”

Put this way, his attendance did not seem unlikely.

Elizabeth was therefore unsurprised to come down for dinner and see the Duke of Wellington waiting in the drawing room, standing a little apart from the rest of the guests with Mr. Darcy. They were talking, or at least, as much as two reserved men who did not know each other and hadn’t much liked each other the first time they met could talk, and both turned to her with patent relief.

“Mrs. Fitzwilliam!” exclaimed the Duke, taking her outstretched hand and kissing it. “By God, it pains me to see you in black like this. How are you, madam?”

Elizabeth answered as composedly as she could, taking some comfort from Mr. Darcy’s steady, slightly worried gaze on her, and his continuing, if silent presence by her side.

The Duke of Wellington replied, “Colonel Fitzwilliam was a most competent man. I do not use that word lightly.”

Elizabeth smiled. “As I am well aware!”

“I should have recalled my lecturer on the picaresque would have already a good example of how rare competence is in the British Army.”

“I saw incompetence both major and general,” said Elizabeth, recalling a pun of which she was still rather proud. “A very rarified combination, sir, and one difficult to forget.”

He shook his head. “I only hope Boney trembled as much as I did when reading our list of generals.”

They were so long in talking about the retreat from Burgos His Grace greeted the other guests distractedly, if at all. Miss Bingley sought to remedy this by going over to Elizabeth with her usual show of false friendliness.

“Dear Mrs. Fitzwilliam,” said she, all graciousness, “how very elegant you look this evening. Your bombazine is so simply cut! Not even a ruffle or a band of embroidery at the hem. So modest!”

So unfashionable, translated Elizabeth. But Elizabeth had never been a dedicated follower of fashion; she preferred to look as if she had stepped out of an Ancient Greek frieze, rather than a fashion plate. “There is so little one can do with the broad hem required by mourning; I am glad to see my poor efforts have not gone unnoticed. Miss Bingley, may I introduce you to His Grace, the Duke of Wellington?”

Wellington clicked his heels together, already predisposed to dislike Miss Bingley for interrupting his conversation on military tactics to speak of bombazine.

Miss Bingley turned to Wellington with a smile. “You will not believe it, Your Grace, but I knew Mrs. Fitzwilliam when she was a young girl running wild in Hertfordshire, her petticoats six inches deep in mud.”

The Duke of Wellington said nothing.

It was impressive, the degree to which the Duke of Wellington said nothing.

Miss Bingley began to doubt herself. She turned to Mr. Darcy. “Mr. Darcy, I am sure you recall Mrs. Fitzwilliam tramping three or four miles, above her ankles in dirt, from her father’s estate all the way to Netherfield?” To the Duke of Wellington, “That was my brother’s estate, sir, before he purchased another in Derbyshire.”

“I recall Mrs. Fitzwilliam making the journey to visit her sister,” said Mr. Darcy, “who had fallen so ill she was unable to leave Netherfield.”

The Duke of Wellington turned fully to Elizabeth saying, a little abruptly, “I do believe I saw you twice at Waterloo, did I not?”

“Indeed, sir.”

“Both times triumphing over the mud to render aid to some fellow creature— the first time rescuing your regiment’s medical supplies from the thunderstorms, and the second pulling a drowning man from a well.”

This second was an accident, as she had really only meant to draw water to treat Colonel Fitzwilliam’s fever and she protested this. His Grace raised an eyebrow. “Ah yes, only attempting to render assistance to your mortally wounded husband, upon whose actions hung my whole strategy for my right flank. I see. You have acted with the most abject self-interest.”

Elizabeth was startled into a smile. “If Your Grace is so determined to compliment me, I shall not try to stop you. After all, Napoleon himself could not manage to stop you from your Sunday dinner, when you were determined to have it.”

Wellington found this style of teasing gratifying, and expressed his pleasure that Elizabeth should be his seat partner for the evening. He was attentive to her, in his way, and though they spoke almost entirely of Hougoumont, the conversation was lively and did not lag or lapse. Indeed, it soon drew in everyone else at the table.  

Elizabeth ceded her share of it when the Earl of Matlock began steering the conversation away from the battle, to his bill, and finished her meal in relative silence. She was not displeased to leave the table when Lady Stornoway suggested they leave the gentlemen to port and cigars. For a half-hour after that Elizabeth was forced to politick with Marjorie, which she hated, and it was with real relief that she saw the gentlemen coming in from dinner.

Darcy, as was his habit, came immediately to her side.

“How was it?”

Darcy grimaced expressively.

“Did Lord Matlock carry the day at least?”

“Fortunately.”

Elizabeth offered him a half-smile. “I think we will be equally glad when this battle is won— oh Mr. Elliot! I must congratulate you on your engagement.”

Mr. Elliot was a good-looking man, as elegant and fashionable as Caroline Bingley, with a similar, albeit better hidden sense of his own superiority. He smiled and, as Darcy refused to give up his place on Elizabeth’s divan by the fire, took the chair opposite them. “I thank you indeed, Mrs. Fitzwilliam. I believe— no, I daresay that I _know_ we have some acquaintances in common, besides my fiance, my sweet Caroline. I think you are acquainted with Colonel and Mrs. Wallis?”

Elizabeth maintained, with great effort, the polite smile with which she had begun the conversation. She had indeed known them; they had been in the more fashionable first battalion of her husband’s brigade in Spain. She had cordially despised both Wallises for their frivolity and want of sense. “Yes, we are a little acquainted. I have not seen them since Toulouse! I hope they are in good health?”

“Indeed, yes. They are presently in Bath, Mrs. Fitzwilliam, very comfortably so, and Mrs. Wallis is in daily expectation of her confinement.”

“What happy news! I hope you will convey my sincerest congratulations to her.”

“I shall, and she and the colonel of course send their condolences. I have often heard them say Colonel Fitzwilliam was a very competent man— a colonel for the battlefield rather than the parade grounds, if memory serves.” It did— except for the context of the statement, which Elizabeth well remembered. It had _not_ been a compliment when it had first been uttered. “I did not have the pleasure of knowing your husband, but as a fairly recent widower myself, I believe I can understand your feelings at the present moment.”

“Too kind,” murmured Elizabeth. Darcy shifted next to her, and when Elizabeth glanced at him, the twitch of his mouth and lift of an eyebrow seemed to convey what _he_ thought of the sincerity of this speech. But the conversation they had thereafter was sensible enough Elizabeth began to wonder if Caroline Bingley might _actually_ have found her match. There was sense enough, and a decent understanding, and an emphasis on gentility above all. As long as he had the appearance of gentility, he did not care if he was actually acting as a gentleman should; and Elizabeth had found this to be pretty near Miss Bingley’s sense of what was ladylike. Mr. Elliot and Miss Bingley seemed to be equally concerned with appearances, and any inconsistency of manner or character arose chiefly from wishing to shew themselves in the best light possible to their interlocutors.  

When Marjorie grew exasperated with Miss Bingley’s attentions, she suggested parlor games “for the young couples” and devoted herself to the tea service. Mr. Elliot, expressing a wish to please his hostess as well as his intended, finally left Darcy and Elizabeth. They parted with him without a pang.

Elizabeth did not feel up to the frivolity of parlor games, and shuddered at the thought of having to kiss any of the male guests, and so kept to her divan, with the excuse of the christening gown she was still making for her Aunt Gardiner, a task to which she was rapidly proving unequal.  Darcy maintained his hold on other half of the divan, taking care to produce a novel he did not intend to read, so nobody would talk to him. To Elizabeth’s mild surprise, Wellington took Mr. Elliot’s chair, where he sat and silently read a newspaper.

His Grace spoke only once to her, to ask if there was any coffee, and, after thanking Elizabeth for procuring him a cup, lapsed back into silence.

Elizabeth was by now too constantly in Darcy’s company to find such reticence unusual, and did not think to talk herself until Wellington tossed aside the paper with a sigh of deep satisfaction.

“Napoleon still on St. Helena, sir?” Elizabeth asked, briefly raising her eyes from the filmy batiste she was trying (and failing) to pin into pleats.

“Not a word on Boney,” His Grace said, with relish. “By Gad, what a pleasant change. You know, Mrs. Fitzwilliam, I cannot get through an entire newspaper at home? A novel would be straight out.”

Darcy, who had not advanced much in his own, made a noncommittal noise.

“Nor any of my clubs,” Wellington mused aloud. “And I cannot think of the last dinner I attended where I was not fussed over so incessantly I could read more than a sentence. Hm.”

Marjorie declared the dinner successful in all its aims, because His Grace, having at last found the one place in London where he could read a newspaper without being disturbed, accepted whatever invitations Marjorie sent him, as long as it was understood and accepted by the rest of the party that he would _only_ sit next to Mrs. Fitzwilliam at dinner, and afterwards.

Elizabeth was more amused than flattered by this; her great friendship with Mr. Darcy had habituated her to the habits and preferences of rich and taciturn men of importance, and she had known of Wellington’s fondness for defensive works from the Peninsular War. That so great a man as the Duke of Wellington would chose to build her up as a wall against the society of people he disliked, like he had built up the forts around Torres Vedreas against the French, occasionally made her laugh, but did not alarm or surprise her. After all, like Torres Vedreas, His Grace had three lines of defense at Fitzwilliam House: Marjorie first, as gatekeeper, who let her guests know the lay of the land, and skillfully tripped them up when they dared trespass; Darcy, next, whose manner frightened strangers away from approaching during port, and even moreso after dinner; and Elizabeth last, whose conversation and presence deterred all but the most determined. Wellington even had a final defense, like Napoleon’s Old Guard, in the discussion of the Earl of Matlock’s bill, which, without fail, always brought over the Earl of Matlock or Lord Stornoway, to bear the unwanted guest away, to talk of how he would be voting, or how her husband or father or uncle etc. thought to vote. His Grace was happy to lend his support to the bill; he had no objections the establishment of a Royal Army Medical Corps, as long as it fit into a hierarchy that pleased him, and as this proposed department would be part of the Army Medical Service, and under the command of his good friend, and the Surgeon-General of the Spanish Campaign, James McGrigor, this pleased him very much indeed.

 

***

 

After what seemed an interminably long time (but was really only a month), Lord Matlock’s Bill for the Establishment of a Permanent Royal Army Medical Corps and the Standards Thereof was presented before the House of Lords. Elizabeth sat with Marjorie in the lady’s gallery, wearing her widow’s veil and longest, most draping gown of black bombazine (and simplest fur-lined black cloak) while trying to look like patience on a monument, instead of bored. As important as she knew this all to be, she was not captivated by a number of old men blustering at each other. The main argument against the bill seemed to be this: our army beat Napoleon’s. It obviously works. Why tinker with it?

Lord Matlock and his allies were long in explaining why, and his opponents were longer in accusing them of being unpatriotic. This, at least, was something interesting. Elizabeth got to see her father-in-law, quite red with rage, ask no less a person than the Duke of Marlborough if _his_ son had given his life for Britain, and if _his_ son had been martyred on the very gate that won Waterloo. This was not actually true, as the true culprit in Colonel Fitzwilliam’s death had been septicemia, but it was so good a rhetorical flourish, Elizabeth was inclined to let it slide.

But thereafter the objections grew less interesting, and Elizabeth grew bored. She almost didn’t realize when the bill had been passed. Only Marjorie tightening her grip suddenly on Elizabeth’s arm pulled her out of some vague thoughts of whether or not she had answered Mrs. Kirke’s latest letter.

The votes were tallied; the bill cleared the House. Now it was over to the Commons. The MP from Lambton, whom old Mr. Darcy had hand-picked some years ago, introduced the bill, with a gravity and decorum that no other MP bothered to emulate.

This debate was the more amusing of the two, for the Commons was the rowdier of the houses. It was very much like going to the theatre, as everyone clapped, or cheered, or jeered, or booed as they were so moved. And mostly, they were moved to boo.

For two or three really dreadful hours, Elizabeth was convinced the bill would fail. The Earl of Matlock could not obviously sweep into the house and demand to know who else’s son sacrificed his life for Britain on the very gates of Hougoumont, and fumed silently on the bench before Elizabeth, Marjorie, and Mary. From time to time he would turn to Lord Stornoway, which was not a helpful exercise, and he increasingly turned to Honoria, who could offer him better information.

Elizabeth was tormented by the idea of having to go through all this _again_ , when Darcy, watching implacably next to Stornoway, turned to Marjorie and said, “I think your dinners have been well digested.”

Mr. Elliot had risen to speak. Mr. Elliot was a very smooth orator, calm, elegant, and damnably persuasive. He settled the crowd quite admirably, and by dint of addressing only MPs who had supported the bill, at least in part, managed to imply that the debate was not whether or not the bill would pass, for surely no one thought that _the Duke of Wellington,_ who had helped shape the bill, could be in any way wrong about what was necessary for the British Army. The debate was about how it should be implemented. Surely it was better to pass the bill now, to establish the corp, and then pass subsequent bills to reform and reformat? He then broke out a wholly unnecessary anecdote about the Duke of Wellington’s mentioning Mrs. Fitzwilliam’s mud at Lady Stornoway’s dinner party— or, at least, Elizabeth _thought_ it unnecessary, and highly embarrassing— but when Mr. Elliot implored the other MPs, “And this, gentlemen, a widow, a respectable widow, of good birth and breeding, whose sense of delicacy and propriety is so great, she remains all in black, though her husband is gone an eight month— this lady was forced to run out into the mud like a kitchen maid, collecting bandages, for there were no men to help her, and no other supplies to be had. How can we, as a civilized nation, allow _this_ to be the standard of the British Army?” provoked more outrage than Elizabeth would really have liked.

She had not minded assisting Colonel Dunne, and was still grateful she had been allowed to do so. To hear what had seemed to her very rational, pragmatic choices made out of necessity and a sense of duty, treated with horror by politicians who had little to no idea of what actually happened on a battlefield, or what it was women actually did there, was aggravating in the extreme. “For heaven’s sake,’ she thought. ‘Even in the fashionable regiments the wives of common soldiers helped to ferry the wounded off the field!’

“I do not know if that dinner was _well_ digested,” was all Elizabeth said. She knew Darcy had heard her, for he had raised one of his folded arms in order to hide a smile behind his hand, but Marjorie said, distractedly, “Well, it will do.”

Everyone agreed with Mr. Elliot, it appeared. Sir Thomas Bertram, whom Mary Crawford despised, got up and took the MPs soundly to task for allowing standards to so slip that good English ladies, who ought to have been safely at home, were instead forced to make up for the improper and quite shameful failings of English men, by going into battlefields like this. What was next, forcing women to pick up guns and shoot at enemy soldiers? (Elizabeth wanted badly to mention that this already happened, especially in artillery units, and was so common an occurrence Wellington had made one Spanish lady a captain of artillery during the Peninsular campaign). But there it was, the final push to seize, once more, the mantle of patriotism from the other side! The fragility of British womanhood had been invoked, and it was sacrilege _not_ to defend it.

The bill passed.

Elizabeth was infuriated.

Darcy was shaking with laughter when he helped her into the carriage.

“Not a word from you,” said Elizabeth, arms folded. But, as he was so disobliging as to take her at her word, Elizabeth burst out, “Did _you_ recognize the Mrs. Fitzwilliam Mr. Elliot spoke of, and Sir Thomas took up? A strong gust of wind seemed likely to blow her away.”

“It is no very great likeness,” agreed Darcy.

Elizabeth nearly threw something at him, but as he then handed in Mary Crawford, she nobly refrained. Mary was in roughly the same humor as Elizabeth. It was not, she said, that she was unused to men being wholly ignorant of the efforts of women, and decrying female efforts in any public thing— for her pet political issue was the abolition of slavery and she and the other female abolitionists were neither welcomed nor appreciated by Mr. Wilberforce and the other Evangelicals with whom they were forced to ally— but it was very galling to have to listen to _Sir Thomas Bertram_ speak for so long on so irritating a subject.

“I have never heard someone speak so long on a subject they know so little about outside of Rosings Park,” said Elizabeth, with some asperity. “Good God, women have always been going onto battlefields. From whence sprang the myth of the Valkyries but women doing what they have always done, and carting the wounded off the field?”

“I know his answer: excessive drink and unEnglish behavior,” replied Mary. She snapped her fingers. “ _That_ for Sir Thomas! Do you know, Elizabeth, that he was almost my father-in-law? I have made a very narrow escape.”

Elizabeth grimaced.

Darcy managed to pull Miss Duncan from the crowd, and helped her into the carriage as well— or rather, held out the door as Miss Duncan scrambled nimbly up the steps. She nodded to Mary and Elizabeth and said, “Ach, ‘tis an honor to be in the presence of the personification of female delicacy. I bet your votives burn feathers and leave offerings of smelling salts to ye.”

“So fitting a portrait of me, is it not?” asked Elizabeth, with some asperity.

“I envision now,” said Miss Duncan, “a replacement of your portrait in Fitzwilliam House. Your imitation of the Lavoisiers, with your white muslin and with Colonel Fitzwilliam at his desk, will no longer do. No, you must be painted afresh, with your widow’s veil and a broad hem of mud on your bombazine gown, in a dead faint.”

This hardly improved Elizabeth’s good humor and she was in rather a foul mood at the celebratory dinner that followed. She was half-tempted to throw off her blacks out of spite, but as she hadn’t even bothered to order any fabric, let alone any gowns, in the appropriate greys and purples of half-mourning, this was not possible. A gown of black spangled muslin, with a demi-train and short sleeves, was the limit of her defiance.

She was able to vent some of her displeasure at dinner, when the Duke of Wellington asked for a summary of the debate. He was departing the next day for France, where he was head of the Anglo-Allied Army of Occupation (something he enjoyed, and the French did not) and though he had made time for the debate in the Lords, he did not hold the Commons in high enough esteem to gift them with his presence. Colonel Pascal, who was on her right, also tried to soothe Elizabeth out of her crochets with talk of all the bill would do.

“It is of great practical value,” said Colonel Pascal. “Unless there is severe mismanagement or very bad action, no surgeon will ever be forced to take bandages off the dead to use upon the living. There will be less likelihood of miasmas entering through wounds and throwing off the humors. We will save a great many lives.”

Mr. McGrigor, the Surgeon General of the Armed Medical Services, overheard this and called down the table at Colonel Pascal to expound on this understanding of how making _doctors_ wash with vinegar fit into what they knew of miasma theory. Mr. McGrigor had been at pains during the Spanish campaign and afterwards, to insist that, though regimental surgeons and assistant surgeons were warrant officers (officers assigned to a regiment, rather than purchasing a place in one), were gentlemen nonetheless. It was a hard sell, for medicine was not yet ranked among the gentlemanly professions of the law (and politics), the Army or the Navy, or the Church. The implications that a gentleman’s hands could be unclean, even up to the elbows in battlefield amputations, rather distressed Mr. McGrigor. He was very willing to allow wards and tents ought to be scrubbed with vinegar, or the chlorinated lime water which smelled better, though as strongly as vinegar, but doctors?

“Sir, doctors are the closest to the wound—”

“Then the wound should be washed.”

“I am not entirely sure why,” admitted Colonel Pascal, “but I have noticed that when I washed my hands as well as the wound, none of my patients developed septicemia. When I did not wash my hands, some still did. I can only imagine it has something to do with scent—”

This developed into a very complicated argument amongst all the doctors assembled at the table, and was only resolved when Darcy invited Colonel Pascal to try a more monitored experiment at the hospital for the poor he had built in one of the villages near Pemberley. Elizabeth returned her attention to the Duke of Wellington, and, for her pains, was teased for being a model of feminine delicacy.

The usual division of the sexes after dinner did not stop the great fun everyone had at Elizabeth’s expense over Mr. Elliott and Sir Thomas’s remarks, or the quarrel that broke out between the ladies who thought a regiment of female soldiers absurd, and those who did not. Elizabeth and Lady Honoria got into a tedious, two-smiles-away-from-open-warfare discussion of Joan of Arc with Lady Metcalfe, one of the Earl of Matlock’s closest allies; Wollstonecraft was misquoted by a dowager baroness; the Sacred Band of Thebes was unwisely and ineptly invoked; and, thanks somehow to Lady Catherine, everyone got into a vicious fight about the proclivities of Alexander the Great. Lady Catherine tried to argue that there was only one way virtuous women could understand Alexander the Great’s friendship with Hephaestion, and Marjorie warningly steered Elizabeth to her usual divan when she grew too sarcastic before a half-dozen allies the Earl of Matlock could ill afford to lose.

Elizabeth took up a volume of Byron’s poetry, in further protest. Her aunt Gardiner had smuggled it into Fitzwilliam House, as the Earl of Matlock had a unconscious but (to the women of his family) quite transparent aversion to Byron, who treated the ambiguity of his soulmark as a subject of considerable interest, not a problem, or something of which to be ashamed. Colonel Fitzwilliam had always been reticent on the subject of Byron, for though it had somewhat relieved him to know there was one person in England not only public about his dual loves, but proud of it, Byron’s more unconventional desires were so antithetical to Colonel Fitzwilliam’s conventional ones, Colonel Fitzwilliam had more often been irritated rather than not at Byron’s notoriety. (This had not stopped him from reading all Byron’s works; it had merely stopped him from confessing he enjoyed them.) Elizabeth had fewer qualms than any Fitzwilliam; Byron’s poems moved her, and certain of them struck at sentiments she had seen in her husband but never heard him express. It felt sometimes, when reading the poems, she was soothing the long buried hurts she had not entirely been able to excavate or understand in the three years of her marriage to Colonel Fitzwilliam— a final closure, as necessary to her as the bill had been to the Earl or Marjorie.

When the gentlemen rejoined them, Colonel Pascal saw what she was about and offered his usual sweet, fleeting smile.

“I realize it is a day of misunderstandings,” said Colonel Pascal, “but a partial victory is better than none.”

“To acknowledge that would be to put aside the stoicism expected by my nearest and dearest, as well as all my farthest and most cordially despised.”

“But not by any who know you,” said Colonel Pascal. “You know, I wonder, really, how history will remember us. Will anyone know why I, a stranger to the Fitzwilliams, a mere regimental surgeon, should have been involved with so important a bill? Will future army surgeons, staring at the two barrels of vinegar per company, think, ‘it is because of that dratted Colonel Pascal I must take valuable time sticking my hands into this dreadful smelling stuff when he didn't even know why this helped’?”

“Your wishes of fame are so modest!”

“Yes, I only wish to be complained about by the future generations.”

“Do you mean to take up Darcy's offer?”

“If I can get leave for it, or if McGrigor will transfer me from the Coldstream Guards to his staff,” said Colonel Pascal. “Do you think Mr. Darcy means his offer? One does not always know with these great men.”

“One knows with Darcy,” said Elizabeth. “If he makes a promise he will fulfill it. He made me a very vague promise to me once about being of service, if ever I should need him, and came straight away to Belgium, to take me home after Richard’s death, even before he knew who had won at Waterloo.”

Darcy was still getting his coffee from Marjorie and Honoria, but seemed to notice her looking at him; at least, Elizabeth caught him starting to smile as he looked at her, and before he turned his attention back to his coffee.

Colonel Pascal followed the line of her gaze and frowned at Darcy’s back. “If you will stand credit for me, as you did with the Fitzwilliams, perhaps...?”

“Of course! It still remains a family affair, you know. Mr. Darcy was named for his mother rather than his father. He, too, is a Fitzwilliam.”

Colonel Pascal seemed to realize Darcy was a man to be trusted, for when Darcy came over, he politely brought up the hospital, and asked for particulars of patients and staff. Darcy answered matter-of-factly, and if he did not know an answer, he promised to find it. As they talked, Elizabeth began to move past her own irritation and realize just how great a thing had been accomplished and grew a little more contented.

Perhaps the Fitzwilliams had not treated her husband as they ought, but they had loved him enough to change the world for him, in a small way. She had done her part; she had avenged her husband’s death as much as she could.

This particular thought startled her a little. She had thought it unfair to be widowed so young, unfair that society had demanded even this sacrifice from someone it had made feel unwanted, despite the position his birth, breeding, and accomplishments ought to have commanded. She and her husband had been wronged by society and she had— however minorly— been revenged upon it.

The great weight of her grief had been by degrees lifting. At this, at the knowledge she had helped force society to consider her husband a hero, worthy of immortalization via this act of parliament, she felt almost light.

Darcy noticed his and said, with a raised eyebrow, “I am pleased to see the widespread acceptance of smallpox inoculation in the parish of Kympton causes you such delight.”

“I beg your pardon, I was not attending.”

“I daresay your mind was more agreeably engaged.”

“It was. I was thinking— you will laugh, but I am so relieved I do not care, so here it is: I have had my revenge on society, for taking my husband from me.”

Colonel Pascal was bemused by this speech, but Darcy understood her.

She attempted to explain, “For the first time since Waterloo, I do not feel like any second I might burst into tears or fly into a temper. It all sounds ridiculous, but—”

“I know Mr. Elliot’s speech displeased you, but he did speak truly on one point. We are comfortable with a really appalling standard of care within the military. You have made society uncomfortable about it—”

Elizabeth inadvertently interrupted him with a laugh. “That sounds petty enough for me!”

“—as uncomfortable,” continued Darcy, “as it made you. Either you or society must change, and you won. Society changed.”

She wondered how much of this speech applied more to Darcy than herself. He had been quietly useful wherever he could— concerning himself with the ordinary business of Matlock so the Earl and Lord Stornoway might focus their energies on politics instead of estate management, assisting with the hundreds of re-writes bills demanded, and attending dinners when he hated the society of strangers. Elizabeth's heart and her spirits were light; she teased him, “Thank you, Mr. Darcy! You make me seem a proper heroine, when all I have done is obey society’s dictates despite my own impulses. I was stoic when I would have cried, friendly when I would have withdrawn from the company of strangers, and eloquent on Hougoumont when I would rather have shrieked at the heavens. In so saying, I suppose I have, in my small way, sacrificed a great deal to see this bill passed, and I hope my poor husband may rest easily, knowing he will not be forgot— by me, or by history.”

“That is more than most of us can claim,” said Colonel Pascal.

The Duke of Wellington came over at that, and there followed a very good conversation about history, before the Duke reached for the paper and they fell into their usual habits— or mostly. Elizabeth moved a little ways away to vent her spleen about Lady Catherine to Lady Honoria and Miss Duncan, with Colonel Pascal to look pleasantly scandalized in all the appropriate places. She returned when the Duke of Wellington set aside his paper, and Darcy (shanghai’d by Lady Catherine), managed to make good his escape, to form their usual trio.

As Elizabeth had been sharpening her wit on Lady Catherine for quite ten minutes, her conversation was at its liveliest. She managed to get laughs from both gentlemen, a triumph she had not anticipated, and even to make Darcy speak a little (usually he merely listened to whatever conversation Elizabeth had with Wellington). Wellington was usually one of the first to leave, and he did not break this habit. However, when Elizabeth rose to curtsey, His Grace chucked her under the chin and saluted her in courtly, rather than military fashion.

She was considerably startled to be kissed and involuntarily put a hand to her veil, half wishing to hide behind it.

The Duke of Wellington looked smug. “My dear Mrs. Fitzwilliam, I look forward to seeing you without your veil, next time I am in England. You are too charming to stay a widow.”

Elizabeth blushed violently; she suddenly recalled the dry, but rather ribald message His Grace had sent to Colonel Fitzwilliam before the eve of Quatre Bras, that the Duke of Wellington would likewise prefer to be closeted with her, than preparing for battle. “Too kind,” she managed.

“Too right,” said the Duke of Wellington. “See if Matlock will give you that Italian wingback chair I sit in as part of your dowry; I find it very comfortable.”

“I am not sure,” said Elizabeth, dumbly. “I believe that chair has been in the family for years.”

“A pity! This was a comfortable refuge. But we must all march on. Let me know your new address, once you have it, and I shall write you.”

With that he departed, leaving Elizabeth extremely confused. She turned around to see Darcy looking at her with what seemed to be absence of mind, and Mary Crawford, coming over with a cup of coffee, staring at the scene with raised eyebrows.

“ _Well_ ,” said Mary, taking the Duke’s vacated chair.

Elizabeth was suddenly very glad she hadn’t told Mary about Wellington’s bit of impudence before Quatre Bras. She would never hear the end of it. “Well _nothing_.”

“If the Duke of Wellington kissed _me_ —”

“I did not ask him to!”

“But he still _did_.”

“It was nothing more than a courtesy!”

“ _Was_ it?” Mary turned to Darcy. “You are a man, Mr. Darcy. What do you think?”

Darcy seemed to come out of a sudden abstraction and said, “I beg your pardon, I was not attending.”

“That, sir, was quite obvious,” said Mary. “Elizabeth, I am not sure if the Duke of Wellington was hinting he’d offer for you, but—”

“He was not in the least,” said Elizabeth, in some exasperation. “His Grace is married.”

“His Grace can be _un_ married. He could well afford a divorce. Any judge would grant it to him as soon as they compared the Duke and Duchess’s soulmarks.”

“There are times, Mary,” said Elizabeth, almost throwing herself onto the divan, “where you remind me far too much of my friend Mrs. Collins. You are always wanting to marry me off to everybody.”

“I am not at all,” said Mary. “I am only wishing you to be married to the Duke of Wellington, and not very seriously at that. He thought you’d be married the next time he was in England. I wonder,” said she, turning to Mr. Darcy, “what he could mean by that?”

Darcy gave her a look which would have checked the impudence in anyone else.  

To Mary Crawford, who did not highly think of men or marriage, and who had given up claims to both, as soon as she realized they were unnecessary to her happiness, it merely dampened it. She turned instead to Elizabeth and asked, “How many invitations did you receive today, Elizabeth?”

“Too many,” said Elizabeth. “I am really considering hiring a secretary to write back, ‘Mrs. Fitzwilliam thanks you for your kind invitation, but regrets to say she cannot attend, because she is in mourning.’ No matter how many times I write it, no one seems to be able to read it. The invitations still come. I think my handwriting is become illegible.”

To Mary and Marjorie’s amusement, and Elizabeth's alarm and dismay, there was now a great misinterpretation of the circumstances that lead to the Duke of Wellington reading his newspaper in Fitzwilliam House every evening. Most of society believed that if one wished the Duke of Wellington to attend a party or a dinner, one must invite Mrs. Fitzwilliam. And, as Elizabeth rejected all invitations with the excuse that she was in mourning, and the Duke continued to spend his evenings at Fitzwilliam House, this impression did not go away.

She was now distressed that some further misinterpretation would be placed upon the Duke of Wellington’s preference for her society. Elizabeth had not really thought of remarrying— her grief had been too profound— and though she was now ready to admit that her husband’s death had not effectively destroyed all hope of future happiness, she was not prepared, as of yet, to go much farther than that. And though she had met a number of women, both on campaign and in society, who took on lovers, Elizabeth was not in the least tempted to emulate their example. Almost abruptly, she said, “I am not ready to think on... on going back into society and all that would imply. It was only today that the most lasting tribute to my husband’s memory was accomplished. I must have some time to—”

“To become accustomed to the idea,” suggested Mary. “But you have wealth and position, which are the usual inducements to wed; you need never marry again if you do not wish it.”

Elizabeth flushed and said, “Mary!”

“Believe it or not, I was not actually insinuating anything there. Perhaps five years ago, or even four I might have suggested your indulging in a liason, but I would not _now_. Not after what caused my engagement to be broken off. Did I ever tell you about it?”

Elizabeth glanced at Darcy, who had decided the most interesting thing in the world was the fire, and could not be pulled away its rapt contemplation.

Mary caught the tail end of this look and said, “Mr. Darcy knows, I’m sure. It was something of a scandal.”

“I had put it out of my mind,” said Darcy, with more politeness than accuracy.

“My brother,” said Mary, “formed a liaison with the eldest, married sister of my intended. She left her husband for him, and now lives in a secluded farmhouse where I dare say she tells the neighbors that her husband died on the Peninsula.”

Elizabeth was shocked beyond all power of speech.

Darcy looked uncomfortable, but he had ever since Mary had started teasing Elizabeth about a second marriage.

“Obviously, Mr. Bertram and I did not marry after that. He seemed rather offended, actually, that I tried to smooth things over and make it easier on his sister— but that is that. As common as they are, I cannot think any good can come out of a liaison where one partner is married. No, take up with a bachelor, if you must.”

“Mary!”

“I only tease you with that because I know you won't. You’d remarry if you wanted that sort of affection again. For my part, I can live very happily without it. I used to be fairly evenly split in the issue, but these days, I find the company of women provides all I desire.” Elizabeth had been more surprised by the idea of Mary’s actually wanting to marry a man than the news that Mary now preferred her own sex. It explained, too, the very close friendship that had existed between Mary and Colonel Fitzwilliam.

They talked of more indifferent subjects after that, though Darcy continued to stare at the fire, his arm and clenched fist upon the mantel. Before he left that evening, Elizabeth whispered to him, “I wish you would not be so censorious; I am convinced nothing in my manner invited such a salute.”

“No,” said Darcy. “But there is a playfulness and an archness to your manner that can be easily misinterpreted.”

Elizabeth was mortified. Darcy saw this and hastily corrected, “Misinterpreted by men who think themselves important, and wish to think themselves the cause of your liveliness, rather than realizing you are lively to please yourself, not anyone else. I assure you, there is nothing wanting in your manner. No one could call you indecorous. I do not in the least think you at fault. I did not speak to censure.” He struggled a moment, apparently not desiring to give offense, but unable to entirely avoid it by saying, “I know she is a great friend of yours, but I have never been particularly fond of Miss Crawford. Her conversation can be... uninhibited. It frequently veers into outrageous impropriety.”

“Oh! Well. Mary is not known for being a pattern card of good behavior. Sometimes I think she speaks specifically _to_ outrage propriety. As long as you are not censuring _me_ , you may glower all you like.”

Darcy smiled a little; Elizabeth tried to return it but was still unsettled. When everyone had retired for the evening she took her candle not back to her room, but to the portrait gallery. The portraits of the most recent additions to the family were closest to the entrance; Elizabeth paused first before the Maria Cosway portrait of Lady Honoria and Miss Duncan, looking as if they had just been surprised on one of their usual walks through the Scottish heather. It had been the concerted effort of months to have Miss Duncan included in the portrait, and Elizabeth and Marjorie had to threaten to sit out of their own portraits to finally achieve their object.

Her candle flame highlighted little details from the portraits of her other sisters-in-law: the folds of Arabella’s red velvet skirt, her daughter’s coral silk sash, the white tops of Arabella’s husband’s boots; the flower Lady Sybil was examining, and the lush vegetation at the feet of Mr. Omai. Elizabeth passed them by, still feeling bitter at the stilted letters she had received from Arabella and Sybil. It had not been their faults that they had not known what to say to her, nor that that had been unable to visit, but Elizabeth still could not forgive them for their absences.

She came at last to the portrait of herself and Colonel Fitzwilliam. Elisabeth-Louise Vigee-Lebrun had painted it only last year, shortly after Napoleon’s first abdication. Elizabeth looked at first at Colonel Fitzwilliam, seated and in full dress uniform, smirking a little, and then moved her candle to take a better look at herself. Here was the Mrs. Fitzwilliam she had known, the one she had been comfortable being: in white muslin and Grecian curls, half-laughing and leaning an arm against the back of Colonel Fitzwilliam’s chair, as if she had just interrupted him from writing dispatches, in order to tease him. This, she thought, was still the true portrait of her: lively and playful, delighting in the ridiculous, quick in wit and emotion, devoted to the few whom she really loved. Not the stoic widow and politician, or the delicate, elegant creature that ought to be swooning at home, or the merry widow ready to form a liaison.  

It seemed to her fitting that only another Elisabeth could pin her down as she saw herself. Elizabeth could not be the creature men wished her to be. But, she thought, eyes flicking to her husband’s painted gray gaze, she had lost her greatest ally. She had lost the man who had seen her for who she was, and insisted on it when other men would have tried to confine her. And she had seen him for all he was, when everyone else insisted upon a blind eye. Perhaps, she thought, feeling both melancholy and happy at the reflection, that was what a soulmate really was, and why it was so rare— someone who took the time and effort to look clear-sightedly at another person, and to accept them all the same.

Elizabeth rubbed the pad of her left thumb against the bottom of her wedding ring. “Well, Richard, my dear,” she told the painting, “at least, _we_ knew each other.”


	13. In which no one likes 'Glenarvon'

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At the too irresistible prompting of an anon, there is now ANOTHER alternate ending, where Elizabeth ends up with the Duke of Wellington: http://archiveofourown.org/works/9848762/chapters/22100921 
> 
> (Splits off about halfway through the last chapter, after the Duke starts hanging around Elizabeth, but before the bill goes before Parliament.)

The following week, Colonel Fitzwiliam's youngest sister, Lady Arabella came for a long overdue visit. She had been in the last trimester of a complicated pregnancy when Colonel Fitzwilliam had died, and now that she and her son were well enough to travel, they came to England with all due pomp.

Elizabeth was glad not to be in the spotlight, for a little while, and was not surprised, but a little saddened to discover that she and Lady Arabella did not know what to say to each other. They sat in strained silence when they could not avoid each other, Elizabeth attempting to talk of books or music, which held little interest to Arabella, and Arabella responding with the domestic concerns which occupied her waking hours, and in which Elizabeth, without husband, farm, household, or children of her own, could have no share. Elizabeth found herself rather relieved when Lady Arabella and her husband went onto Scotland with Lady Honoria and Miss Duncan. 

While Lady Arabella was in town, however Elizabeth took comfort in visits with the Gardiners, whom she rather felt she had neglected. 

Mrs. Gardiner was always glad to see Elizabeth, and teased her a little for being so long in town without dining with them. “I am sorry we cannot provide any great men for you, Lizzy, but I think your uncle Gardiner has grown greater since you last saw him.” She put a hand to her own rounded stomach and said, laughingly, “I certainly have!”

Elizabeth smiled, “Oh really, aunt. Great men are just _men_. Shall I let you into a secret?”

“Oh pray do!”

“The Duke of Wellington dined with us so often because it was the only place he could read his newspaper without being disturbed.”

Both Gardiners stared at her a moment, and then began to laugh.

“It is true,” Elizabeth said, still laughing herself. “The whole house was still in mourning! Our dinner parties were necessarily small, and we did not receive a great number of visitors. And you know I have, from earliest infancy, been brought up to understand the ways of reserved, clever men who just wish to be left alone to read.”

“How little you have changed, in some ways,” said Mr. Gardiner.

Elizabeth’s smile turned a little incredulous at this. “Oh, dear sir! I have observed some of the greatest victories of the wars, and paid the highest cost. A person cannot help but be changed by this.”

“That is unavoidable,” said Mr. Gardiner, “but Lizzy, you are still as arch as ever. Perhaps the subjects of your study have changed, but your take on them has not.” There came a knock on the door; a ship that had been much delayed by winter storms had returned to port, and Mr. Gardiner begged their pardon, but ran off it once. Elizabeth was not displeased to be left to the company of her aunt, and unburdened herself a little, of the feelings caused by a rather disappointing letter she’d had from Jane.

“They do not think they shall be really done with repairs until the fall at least,” said Elizabeth, “due to some rioting at Mr. Bingley’s fathers’ mills, which damaged the machinery— which will necessarily put off their scheduled home repairs, and which will necessarily put off my arrival. I am selfish enough to write back declaring it is no hardship— I have been used to sleep through cannonades— but I wonder if I would be adding to Jane’s burdens in being there.”

“Your uncle Gardiner had heard there were riots up north. These Luddites certainly make themselves heard.” She rested her folded hands on top of her swollen midsection. “Well, Lizzy, if you cannot go to your sister, why not have one of your sisters come to you? I am not sure Mary will think it right, since you have not finished your year of mourning, but Kitty will, I think, be quite mad with joy at the idea of staying with you for a full season.”

“Oh,” said Elizabeth, warming to the idea, “Georgiana was just pressing Darcy to have Kitty come and stay with her in London— Darcy did not think it proper to have Kitty stay with him, why did I not think of having Kitty come to stay with _me_?”

“Lady Stornoway cannot, I think, object to your having your sister with you.”

Lady Stornoway did not, and indeed, was surprised that Elizabeth had not thought to invite Kitty sooner. “I had Lawrence over every week when I was first married,” said Marjorie, “and I almost always have a friend staying with me for at least part of the season. Of course you are welcome to invite your sister to stay with you; I only wonder why you did not ask before.”

“I thought perhaps you might have... tired of my relations, given this summer. I did not wish to impose.”

“Why, Lizzy!” exclaimed Marjorie, in some surprise, “your manners are too nice. Do you really think any of your relations are worse than Lady Catherine? Two of your sisters are at home, I believe... shall I invite one of them to come stay with you?”

Elizabeth felt suddenly more cheerful. “Truly, you would not mind my having Kitty with me for the season?”

“As long as Kitty does not mind how limited our entertainments will be,” said Marjorie. “But even if there are no balls, I think you might now safely go to the opera and the theatre. As long as you are not seen _only_ attending a comedy, there can be no complaints.”

 

***

 

Mr. and Mrs. Bennet, their two unmarried daughters, and Miss Darcy arrived towards the end of February. Elizabeth was glad of her father, Kitty, and Georgianna, and could— in small doses— be glad of Mary and Mrs. Bennet.

Mary’s conversation, though as dry as ever, was at least more interesting now that it concerned Egyptian gods, rather than English ones, and Mrs. Bennet, in her way, attempted to be kind. “ _Well_ , Lizzy,” said Mrs. Bennet, almost as soon as Elizabeth arrived at the Gardiners' house, “you are receiving dukes now! But you were always a favorite of Wellington’s were you not? Ever since your first campaign! I was just telling Mrs. Phillips the other day, you know, about how when you were all safely retreated from Burgos, His Grace danced the supper set with you in Lisbon— at the very first ball after the retreat! And now you are safe back in England, what would please the Duke of Wellington more but to take his suppers always with you! Lady Lucas was good enough to say she saw a very pleasing mention of you in the society pages. It read, “The Duke of Wellington remains, as ever, in the company of the the widow Fitzwilliam.” Indeed, everyone I asked in Meryton seemed to have read it! I do not like to brag about my own children, to be sure— but it is a fine thing to see my own daughter grown out of her wildness and mentioned as being in the company of the Duke of Wellington! _As ever_ in the company of the widow Fitzwilliam. Oh how it pleased me to see it!”

Elizabeth was uncomfortable on this subject, especially since Mary Crawford still liked teasing her on it, and Darcy had been in a Mood since it had occurred, two weeks ago. She was acquainted, at this point, with most of Darcy’s moods, but she hadn’t seen the shape of this one before. Usually what one saw in Darcy was only a tenth of what he was feeling or thinking, but there were tells enough that Elizabeth could pursue a scowl to its source, like a fisherman pulling up a line, after seeing a float jerk about on the water. She knew Darcy had been offended by what Mary had said, but was not entirely sure why so black a mood had lasted so long. Did he somehow feel she was betraying Colonel Fitzwilliam? The thought was absurd— but the other that presented himself, that Darcy was somehow jealous, did not make much sense either.

Surely Darcy _knew_ how much she preferred his company? If she ever did remarry (though, depending on the day, she thought she might never do so), surely he realized she would never marry anyone that would be threatened by the close friendship she had with Darcy? Surely Darcy did not think she would not abandon him, and leave him entirely without confidantes? But she had paused too long. Mrs. Bennet said, pointedly, “Lizzy, I cannot think you will long remain a favorite if you just sit silently like this before the Duke of Wellington.”

“The Fitzwilliams have trained your daughter into stoicism, my dear,” said Mr. Bennet, flicking his glance up from his paper. “All she can now do is sit like patience on a monument, or pose for commemorative cameos.”

“I was merely wool-gathering,” protested Elizabeth, setting her cup of tea down.

Mrs. Bennet was all sympathy. “Yes, those Fitzwilliams must have worked you to nothing. My poor girl, you were so worn out in September! And to be in _London_ all winter! The country is a vast deal pleasanter to my way of thinking. They ought to have let you come to Longbourn with Miss Darcy. A nice, restorative lease at Longbourn, that is what will put a bloom back in your cheeks.” She sighed. “Black always did make you look pale and sickly.”

“Thank you Mama,” said Elizabeth, after a moment.

“I wish you would get some lavender dresses, they would become you a great deal better. But I suppose the Fitzwilliams expect you to be in black for the full year.”

“No, they do not, but I rather expect it of myself.” Elizabeth picked up her tea again, so that she had something to do.

Mr. Bennet quite surprised them all by folding up his paper and putting it aside. “Hard going still, eh Lizzy?”

“Harder some days than others, sir.” Elizabeth was surprised to feel a hand on her shoulder, and surprised again to realize it was her mother’s.

“Oh Lizzy,” said Mrs. Bennet, patting her shoulder, “it is a very sad thing to be sure. It was a very good match you made, almost better than Jane’s! Of course you will be forever regretting that Colonel Fitzwilliam is gone. But look how well off he has left you!”

“I would give it all to have him back,” said Elizabeth, frustrated.

“I only meant that that shews how very much he cared for you,” said Mrs. Bennet, tartly, “but you are always so determined to misunderstand people. Of course you wish him back! It is much better for a woman to be married than to be a widow. No one finds widowhood pleasant, even if they have _your_ jointure. But Lizzy, you must face the reality that you _are_ a widow and there is no changing that unless you marry a second time.”

“I know— I _know_ it is impossible to have him back, Mama. I am... becoming resigned to that fact.”

“There,” said Mrs. Bennet. “That is all one can ask. And you know, I am very glad you will be having Kitty with you for the rest of the season. Kitty is so lively, she will cheer you up. And I know you cannot go anywhere, but men may visit _you_. There is no shame in a second match, you know. You always were, in your way, very romantic, and let me tell you, Miss Lizzy, there is no reason to wear the willow forever unless you wish to.”

“My dear,” said Mr. Bennet, seeing that Elizabeth’s temper could not quite bear this yet, “perhaps you might wish to show Elizabeth Lydia’s last letter.”

Lydia was as infrequent and dilatory a correspondent as Mr. Bennet; Elizabeth had received only two letters since Lydia’s departure: one saying that Lydia had safely arrived in Canton, and another saying there was talk of a great battle in Belgium, and had Lizzy been part of it? Elizabeth still had not answered this second. She did not know what to say.

The letter to Mrs. Bennet was cheerful and though very long, did not contain a great deal of information. But it did supply a great deal of conversation, which lasted until Mary, Kitty, and Georgiana came down, and Darcy arrived for dinner.

He was in better spirits at the appearance of his sister and even smiled when she gave a glad cry of, “Fitzwilliam!” and rushed into his arms. Elizabeth wondered if perhaps Darcy had just been missing his sister, but the real answer came after dinner, when Elizabeth and Mrs. Gardiner were pouring the coffee. Darcy hesitated as he took his cup and said, “Elizabeth— Mrs. Fitzwilliam.”

“Yes?” she prodded, when no answer was forthcoming.

He cleared his throat, his color high. “I wonder if perhaps— now that Miss Catherine Bennet is staying with you, and you are chaperoning her, perhaps you might consent to chaperoning Georgiana as well. Georgianna has been begging me to ask you since you invited your sister to town. As they seem to have made a pact to attend all, or nearly all their social engagements together, I do not think it will be very much more work for you.”

“Oh,” said Elizabeth, a little startled. “Why that— I should be very glad to. Is _that_ what you have been brooding over, like a hen with her chicks?”

Darcy cleared his throat in a way that conveyed that he had been brooding about exactly this issue.

“Good God, Darcy, I could have told you weeks ago that I would be very happy to do it, if you can live with the inconvenience of a chaperone living in a house other than your own.” She felt incredibly relieved.

“Of course. Georgiana was very affected by Colonel Fitzwilliam’s death; I do not think she will wish to be very much out in society. I am not sure we will venture much beyond the family circle.”

“Then really, what was your concern?”

“I did not wish in any way to imply that you were of the same standing as a paid companion—”

“No, I am family— which means, dear cousin, that you could have just asked me and I would have agreed at once. After all you have done for me, you do not think I would deny you something as simple as ‘watching over the best behaved nineteen-year-old I know’?”

Darcy seemed to be smiling in spite of himself. “I thought you might dislike the scheme, since it would require you to go out in society once again.” At her puzzled look, he clarified, “You are still in all black.”

“So I am,” said Elizabeth, looking down at herself. “I daresay I can manage half-mourning if you can give me a week or two to buy some grays and purples. That should please my mother.”

It did, a great deal. Mrs. Bennet had a lot of opinions on just what shape Elizabeth’s half-mourning should take, and was delighted to hear that Kitty might be taken to some _ton_ events after all. Mary was delighted, in her way— delighted, at least, to have a subject on which to moralize. It did not suit her feelings or her sense of propriety to have Elizabeth dashing about in (horrors!) lavender muslin to balls and parties. Elizabeth’s protests that these would probably all be family affairs, and that she would not be dancing did not weaken Mary’s resolute disapproval.

Kitty found it ridiculous, but had finally grown out of arguing with Mary. Instead, she loftily said to Elizabeth after dinner, “Mary is not happy unless she can look down on one or another of us for being worse behaved than she is. Now Lydia is gone off to China, she has to make do with things that only bother _her_. If you had spent the full year and a day of your mourning period all in black, she would have found something to disapprove of.”

Elizabeth was considerably started by the wisdom and insight of this, particularly since, in her mind, Kitty was perpetually a fretful little girl with a constant cough. But Elizabeth supposed this to be an effect of war; anyone who hadn’t seen a howitzer shell explode overhead seemed to Elizabeth young and terribly sheltered. It still occasionally surprised Elizabeth to see that Kitty was... perhaps not entirely grown up, but adult enough to have relatively well-informed opinions. The fact that Mr. Bennet occasionally asked Kitty’s opinion of things out of interest (instead of a desire to make fun of her), only cemented this impression, and, while Mr. and Mrs. Bennet and Mary remained in town, Elizabeth found herself feeling absurdly sentimental that little Kitty was all grown up. She hadn’t felt this maudlin when Kitty or Lydia had begun pinning their hair up or going to balls, but the fact that Kitty was almost mature made her feel rather old.

Though, it had to be admitted, the fact that she was acting as someone’s chaperone probably contributed more to that feeling than any insights of Kitty’s. Elizabeth had begun to go out a little— no more than two or three times a week, to salons run by Marjorie’s friends, or in family groups to the concerts, plays, and operas London offered— but did not enter into these with the same unthinking enjoyment she once had. Part of it was the fact that Colonel Fitzwilliam could no longer listen to her commentary on this person’s dress, or that play’s surprise twist, but part of it was the fact that she was responsible for more than just herself. It felt very odd. She tried to convince herself that it wasn't _that_ different from the hints she'd given and interventions she'd staged before, but something seemed to have shifted— not just in her mind, but in the minds of those around her. People approached her and talked to her more formally; they flattered her rather than treat her with the amused indifference they had in the past. 

Elizabeth was rather puzzled by this until Mary Crawford said, “My God, Mrs. Fitzwilliam, the deference with which they treat you! It is enough to bore one to tears.”

Elizabeth glanced around Lady Jersey’s drawing room and, seeing that Marjorie had an eye on Kitty and Georgianna, said, “Why, what do you mean, Miss Crawford? I feel rather as if they are just treating me like a dowager— which I am.”

“Yes, at five-and-twenty, you are aged out of the fun of _ton_ life, fit only to decorate the edges of ballrooms. No, I only mean that after you were praised in the Commons for being a model of female delicacy, and it became public knowledge that the only way to the Duke of Wellington was through you, people started holding you in considerable awe. Now that so high a stickler as Mr. Darcy of Pemberley has entrusted you with his sister, no one quite knows what to do with you.”

Elizabeth protested this, but realized it was true. She had somehow become a person of considerable importance. Even her father observed it, when the two of them were walking to the British Museum, to pick up Mary. They could scarcely go two or three paces without someone tipping their hat.

“My goodness Lizzy,” said Mr. Bennet. “I rarely pay attention to the people with whom I am forced to converse at Matlock House, but I cannot possibly have met and forgotten _all_ these people at your father-in-law’s. Have you?”

“Oh that insufferable man,” said Elizabeth.

“That is an unkind way to talk about your father-in-law. True things often are.”

“No, Wellington! If I was in my old military circles, I would have a better epithet to use than ‘insufferable,’ but this is all his fault. He didn’t want to talk to anyone when he was here, so he hid behind me and my mourning like a redoubt. I had my blacks to hide behind, but now I am in gray and taking Miss Darcy about, there is no avoiding society.”

Mr. Bennet was vastly amused. “Poor Lizzy! Turned into the lines of Torres Vedras! Useful to the great man during battle, and plagued by interested tourists forever thereafter. Does he actually write to you?”

“He does.”

“Then you should sign your next not as “E. Fitzwilliam, widow,” but as “E. Fitzwilliam, access point to rich and taciturn men of consequence.” Though perhaps I am limiting you too much in that. I daresay your chaperoning Miss Darcy about town is part of your newfound popularity. She is rather a great heiress if I am not mistaken. I think a large number of the men smiling at you are hoping to smile through you at your dear young cousin.”

“Da— confound it all!”

“And then, too, there is your other cousin, _Mr_. Darcy. He is not married— and despite being a proud, disagreeable sort of man, he is still very rich. I daresay all those women nodding at you are as interested in what you can tell them about Mr. Darcy as they are about the Duke of Wellington. Darcy they might actually manage to make into a husband. His Grace is already married— though I daresay that doesn’t stop him.”

Elizabeth groaned. “Good God! I liked it better when I was just a colonel’s wife.” Before her father could speak she said, impatiently, “Yes, yes, I know— I cannot be that any longer. But I am not sure I like being merely a conduit for unsociable men. At least when I was a colonel’s wife, I was understood to have some sort of...value on my own, not just based on my relationship to a man. That is— yes, I was primarily defined by who my husband was, but I was... I don’t quite know how to express it— active?”

“Yes, it was understood you quite regularly faced danger and laughed at it. Now it is understood that you quite regularly face great men and laugh at them.”

“Ha ha,” said Elizabeth.

“That’s the spirit,” said her father, pretending to be flattered.

 

***

 

The attention did not abate when April began, and Mr. and Mrs. Bennet removed to Longbourne once again, taking Mary with them. Mary left Elizabeth a very long lecture that Elizabeth shoved into a desk drawer and forgot about; Mrs. Bennet left Elizabeth with an admonition to have Kitty married (but only to a rich gentleman); and Mr. Bennet left Elizabeth with a copy of Olympe de Gouges’s _Declaration of the Rights of Women_. This she read multiple times. It put into comprehensible focus some of the amorphous but persistent problems that had always worried and bothered her. Elizabeth thought that she felt as she supposed a myope might, after putting on spectacles for the first time.

Marjorie, seeing Elizabeth reading it after dinner one evening, as Georgiana and Kitty played duets, asked to see it and read aloud the first sentence (“Men, are you capable of being just?”) with great amusement.

“Of course they aren’t,” said Marjorie. “Why would Madame de Gouges even feel the need to ask so ridiculous a question?”

“Because not everyone realizes it is a question that ought to have a different answer,” said Elizabeth, picking up the never-finished, never-quite-right christening gown. She was convinced her new Gardiner cousin would be married with children of their own by the time she finally managed to correctly pin the pleats. “Marjorie, how on earth do you live with this— with this constant attention and misunderstanding? I daresay even our father-in-law does not understand the extent of all you do.”

“I surround myself with people who do understand me, as much as I can,” replied Marjorie, skimming the declaration. “Unfortunately, my dear sister, our society is structured in a way that means women are constantly misunderstood or devalued. That is how you, someone who has very cheerfully written to me about blowing up powder wagons, picking locks, loading pistols, dressing the dinners of your captors with laudanum, and breaking out of French prisons, can be held up as an exemplar of female delicacy. Or how people can say that Stornoway is a competent politician, and that I’m merely a very charming hostess. When you find people who... shall we say understand why your petticoats are muddy?”

“That will never die will it?”

“No,” said Marjorie serenely. “It will not. But when you do find those people, cling to them. Be kind to them. They will remind you who you are when everyone else tells you you’re something you’re not.”

“Does that work for you?”

“If I did not visit Lawrence in his barracks twice a week, and Mary was not so constantly at Matlock House I would probably have to lock myself into a linen closet in order to scream everyday without being heard by the servants. Oh! My dear— I wasn’t thinking— you must have a number of friends from your military days. Invite them to stay at Matlock House! Just tell me names and addresses and I will have them here. You need allies when you are just starting a society career.”

“I should like to see Mrs. Collins,” said Elizabeth, promptly. “Perhaps the Tilneys might come for a fortnight, if Mrs. Tilney can be persuaded to leave her children for so long a time, and perhaps my friend Mrs. Kirke and her husband might come over from Paris? But certainly Mrs. Collins.”

“Mrs. Collins I could probably get,” said Marjorie. “It is getting her without getting Mr. Collins that shall be the difficulty.”

 

***

 

The Tilneys were the first to accept the invitation to Matlock House. They were kind enough to read into Elizabeth’s cheerful, short missive all the longing for their company she could not set down on paper, and replied that they would be very glad to come to town for a few weeks, if Lady Stornoway could make room for their children in their nursery. This Lady Stornoway readily granted, and the Tilneys arrived speedily and without ceremony. Their reunion was at first met with tears, for the want of their usual fourth was very painful, but they took great consolation in being once more together, and the Tilneys were happy to renew their acquaintance with Kitty Bennet and the Darcys. If they were less happy to renew their acquaintance with the Fitzwilliams, they did not show it, except in Mr. Tilney’s engaging Lady Catherine in a conversation where she ended up so violently disagreeing with herself she declared the London air was not good for her, and returned to Rosings Park.

Elizabeth and Mrs. Tilney were both ramblers by nature, preferring to be out of doors when the weather was fine (and even occasionally when it was not), and were able to bolster their spirit by what exercise they could get in the Matlock succession houses, and what parks could be braved in pelisses and pattens. It was thanks to the former that Marjorie hit upon the idea of turning over her usual duties with the flowers more permanently to Elizabeth.

“Henry had to teach me to love a rose,” said Mrs. Tilley, as they arranged flowers in Elizabeth’s sitting room one day. “I was never very fond of hot house blooms before, but I suppose that is partly because I was unused to them.”

“I am grown too used to luxury now,” said Elizabeth, arranging some leftover pinks in a Wedgewood vase. “I must have fresh flowers about me even in February.”

They were interrupted in their tasks by one of the parlormaids, Betsy, who announced a Colonel Brandon, with his wife and ward, wished to call upon Mrs. Fitzwilliam, if she was at home to visitors.

Darcy looked up from the game of chess he was playing with Mr. Tilney. “The name is familiar.”

Boatswain huffed his agreement, though Mrs. Tilney admitted her ignorance.

“He was Colonel Fitzwilliam’s first commanding officer,” Elizabeth explained to Mrs. Tilney.

“Have you met him before?” asked she.

“We were all introduced but it was at rather a large and crowded ball, and it was just after I had come back from Spain for the second time.” She finished depositing the last rose into the vase, and turned back to the door, where the maidservant was pretending not to eavesdrop. “Thank you Betsy, please show him up. Oh— and do tell me where I ought to put my poor attempt at a floral arrangement.”

Betsy was a little started to have her opinion asked and looked about the room. “Er...on the small round table, nearest the fire, Mrs. Fitzwilliam? It will look a treat when someone comes through the door.”

Elizabeth moved it there and studied the effect. “Thank you Betsy! You have a good eye. Mrs. Tilney and I shall have completed our more ambitious project for the front hall by the time you return.”

Their final effort was not as pretty as any of Marjorie’s creations, but for someone whose tastes were best pleased by a handful of roses in a imitation-Grecian vase, and someone who was naturally indifferent about flowers, it was better than either of them expected. Mrs. Tilney eagerly pulled her husband and Darcy away from their game to admire their handiwork, when Colonel Brandon came with his wife and ward. They greeted Elizabeth with all the warmth of old friends, even though Elizabeth honestly could not recall what, if anything she had said to them at one ball where she had been delirious with seasickness and sleeplessness. To Elizabeth’s deep embarrassment, she even had some trouble telling which was the wife and which was the ward. They were both very lovely, expressive women in their early thirties.

Elizabeth gestured vaguely at them all and said, “Colonel and Mrs. Brandon, and their ward,” when making the introductions. The Brandons apparently considered this satisfactory, and did not correct her or introduce themselves further, instead electing to begin immediately with their condolences. The woman in the slate green cambric swept Elizabeth into her arms and poured forth a torrent of feelings and poetry, before recollecting herself and pulling back to dry her eyes.

Elizabeth was embarrassed not to recall making the acquaintance of this woman and mumbled the honorific before saying “—Brandon, thank you, it is kind of you to visit me when your own spirits are still affected.”

The second lady, in a print round gown, was also very tearful, and though she did not offer any Thomas Grey or Cowper, expressed her deep sorrow. Neither of the ladies actually mentioned when they had last seen Colonel Fitzwilliam however, and Elizabeth was just as lost at how to address them as before.

To Elizabeth’s relief, Mrs. Tilney was equally confused, and so did not address either lady with anything more than a vague, ‘Oh!’ Darcy’s reaction to the general befuddlement was to go and fuss with the fireplace and abandon them all to continuing ambiguity and awkwardness.

Eventually Mr. Tilney hit upon the clever idea of saying Colonel Brandon, “Sir, Colonel Fitzwilliam told me that he was always glad of a visit to Delaford, because your home was so musical. I forget who is the musician of the party—”

“Mrs. Brandon,” said the colonel, smiling at the lady in slate green cambric, “is the true musician among us. Though I have heard often enough from Colonel Fitzwilliam that Mrs. Fitzwilliam plays and sings very well.”

“Not as well as Mrs. Brandon, I am sure,” demurred Elizabeth, and begged that lady to favor them with some music. To the relief of all, the woman in the slate green cambric went over to the piano to play, and thus establish her identity. Elizabeth felt quite easy in addressing the woman in the print round-gown as ‘Miss Brandon’ only to be gently corrected with an, “Oh no! Colonel Brandon is my relation from my mother’s side. I am Miss Williams.”

Mrs. Tilney said, “Oh?”

“Yes,” said Colonel Brandon, tearing his attention from the music. “Eliza is the daughter of my cousin, the late Mrs. Williams.” He looked a little anxious at this; Elizabeth had some vague recollection of Colonel Fitzwilliam’s saying Colonel Brandon had tried to elope with a cousin as a young man.

“It is a great pleasure for me to meet a fellow Elizabeth,” said Elizabeth, trying to smile through the suspicion that Miss Williams was really Miss Brandon, after all, “Though I must admit I am glad to hear you are an Eliza rather than a Lizzy. It shall save us all confusion.”

Miss Williams dimpled. “There are so many variations to Elizabeth, are there not? It is a great blessing to be able to pick up and put down as many names as one wishes. When I was at school in Dorsetshire, people insisted on calling me ‘Betsy.’ I cannot tell you with what relief I heard Colonel Brandon call me ‘Eliza’ on his visits from the East Indies.”

Darcy was obviously listening to this conversation, and, in the hopes of luring him back to the couch, Elizabeth spoke to Miss Williams for rather longer than she had intended. She discovered that Miss Williams vehemently hated Bath, had been born in London, but prefered the country. “I generally keep to the country,” said Miss Williams, with a slightly anxious look at her guardian, “for my mother died of a consumption and— and I find the city air not generally beneficial to my health. Indeed, I should have remained in Devonshire had it not been my earnest wish to convey my condolences to you myself. Your husband was my guardian’s aide-de-campe for several years, and once he was good enough to convey me from school to some friends in Bath, when Colonel Brandon was too busy with his regiment to do so himself. Lieutenant Fitzwilliam was a very awesome figure in his red coat and gold braid to me, but he was so extremely kind and cheerful I grew comfortable with him very quickly. I can only imagine he grew in amiability as the years continued.”

Elizabeth was very touched by this, and thanked Miss Williams with more warmth than politeness, admitting that she did not think she would ever find a man who united such intelligence and so easy-going a temperament as Colonel Fitzwilliam. He was still very much missed. She found herself rather tearful all of a sudden. She pretended to be affected by the slight smoke from the fire, and lapsed into silence, to better attend to Mrs. Brandon’s performance.

It was an astonishing rendition of Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata,” and the applause and praise that followed it was sincere. Elizabeth was in some anxiety she might be called upon to play after so masterly a performance, but as Mr. Pattinson brought in the tea tray, she was spared this. Elizabeth was left with an extra cup, when everyone had sat down again, and was puzzling over it when she realized Darcy had not given up his post by the fire.

“Cousin Darcy,” said Elizabeth, a little pointedly, “there is tea now.”

Darcy made a vague noise that indicated he had heard her, but was absorbed in peering up the chimney. When she rephrased her statement as a question, Darcy said, abruptly, “Have you noticed the fire is not drawing well?”

“The room is a little smokey,” said Elizabeth, “but nothing to signify.”

“I hardly noticed it,” said Mrs. Tilney.

“The chimney is blocked,” said Darcy, arming himself with the fireplace poker.

“Then I shall procure the services of a chimney sweep,” said Elizabeth, in some exasperation. “Darcy, I wish you would sit and drink tea like all the rest of us. You are mistaking the general tone of the party, which is for tea and conversation, not soot and home repair.”

“I shall have it fixed in a moment.”

Mr. Tilney laughed. “You cannot win this battle, Mrs. Fitzwilliam. I recall one Sunday evening where Darcy entirely dismantled a clock because the second hand was off by two seconds, entirely disrupting every plan Colonel Fitzwilliam and I had.”

Darcy started prodding at whatever was blocking the chimney.

The knot of Brandons, civilly drinking tea by the fire, kindly pretended this was normal behavior. Indeed, Colonel Brandon even thanked Darcy for his pains, for it was still very cold out, and his flannel waistcoat did not entirely keep out the chill. Elizabeth shook her head at the Tilneys, who hid their smiles in their teacups.

“Ah,” said Darcy, “I have got it—”

He managed to dislodge an abandoned bird’s nest that had fallen down the chimney and gotten stuck there. This fell onto the logs, shooting up hot gusts of air and a number of sparks; Mr. Darcy fell back, coughing a little, but not quickly enough to avoid the right sleeve of his coat catching fire.

“Mr. Darcy is on fire!” exclaimed Mrs. Tilney, loud enough to rouse Boatswain and set him to barking.

“The vase, there is water in the vase!” Elizabeth cried. There was liquid in the teapot, too, she thought desperately and, seizing it, raced towards Darcy. Miss Williams was quicker and nearer. She seized the vase, and thrusting the flowers at Mrs. Brandon, threw the water fast enough to extinguish the worst of the conflagration. Colonel Brandon picked up a lap blanket and flung it about Darcy to smother what remained of the flames.

Darcy was shaken (and a little smokey) but seemed perfectly fine by the time Elizabeth was near enough for the tea to be of any use.

Mr. Tilney occupied himself in stomping out any lingering sparks on the carpet, Mrs. Tilney went running for a servant, Boatswain bowled over his master, and Elizabeth, to her mortification, burst into tears. The scent of burning cloth had frightened her half out of her wits.

“I am quite well,” said Darcy, from the floor. He pushed Boatswain aside and carefully peeled off the blanket. His blackened sleeve steamed but was not smoldering, or on fire. “You must not be distressed on my account.”

“Not distressed!” Elizabeth cried. “Good God man, you caught on fire! If Miss Williams hadn't picked up the vase, you would be horribly burnt, if not dead— of course I am distressed!”

Kitty and Georgianna, drawn by Mrs. Tilney’s cries, came running from the still room, where they had been attempting to make cowslip wine. They were very much astonished at the tableau which greeted them.

Miss Williams, standing dumbly in place, still holding the vase, said, “Oh, er, hello. The danger is quite passed. Mr. Darcy was on fire, but we have put it out.”

“ _What_?” exclaimed Georgiana, rushing into the room.

Elizabeth sank down onto the divan out of actual weakness. Darcy sat down beside her, seeming more upset by her reaction than the fact that he had been _literally on fire,_ which was so of a piece with him that Elizabeth cried harder. All was hopeless confusion; Georgiana and Boatswain quite outdid each other in their mutual desires to inspect Darcy themselves for any real injury; Mrs. Brandon seemed close to fainting; Mr. Tilney was making some joke no one heard, and Miss Williams, at rather a loss, put the roses back in the empty vase, and set it back on the end table.

“We miss everything exciting,” said Kitty.

“Exciting!” cried Elizabeth. “Oh aye, very exciting! Darcy, I have never been so vexed with you— you frightened me half to death!”

“Frightened _you_?” cried Georgiana, much astonished.

Elizabeth wiped her streaming eyes and said, “Yes, I can still be frightened. I thought Darcy would be seriously injured.”

Darcy looked harassed but unharmed, and said, “It was no great matter.”

“Aye, thanks to Miss Williams,” Elizabeth managed to get out, in between tears. “She saved your life.”

Darcy looked as if he was about to protest and then said, with a look of mild chagrin, “I forgot the fire would necessarily flare up.”

Elizabeth realized she was still holding the teapot and passed it over to Kitty, who was hovering anxiously by her side. “Oh you impossible man! You forgot how much I care for _you._ If anything happened to you, I would fall utterly to pieces. Never frighten me like that again!”

Darcy colored at this, no doubt embarrassed, and, after offering Elizabeth his handkerchief, turned gravely to the Brandons, to thank them all. They declared, in varying degrees of dazedness, that they were happy to be of service. Elizabeth added to their thanks, and then the servants burst in, with the Earl and Lord and Lady Stornoway in tow and there were so many people Elizabeth gave up keeping track of what was happening and merely focused on trying to stop crying.

She had been very badly shaken; Kitty, anxious and fretful, and not in the least helpful in a crisis, kept offering various things that Elizabeth neither needed nor wanted. In some desperation, Kitty asked Elizabeth to come pass judgment on the cowslip wine she and Georgiana had been making in the still room—  for it was a receipt Elizabeth had given them, and only that February Elizabeth had managed to avert their attempt at making orange wine from its inevitable and disastrous conclusion.

They removed themselves from the crowd, and to the coolness of the stillroom. Kitty solicitously bathed Elizabeth’s temples with cologne water, and Elizabeth at last grew calm enough to pin on her apron and look at Kitty and Georgiana’s efforts. They had successfully boiled water and sugar, and poured it over the orange and lemon rinds; they had been waiting for this to cool before sprinkling in the gallon of cowslips Elizabeth and Mrs. Tiney had helped them pick, on a daylong expedition to Richmond. Elizabeth tested the temperature, found it to be milk-warm, and began strewing in the flowers, trying very determinedly not to think of Hougoumont. But those still-smoldering walls seemed to loom about her; she felt as if she was still choking on the filthy, sooty air, thick with powder and smoke and the scent of corruption.

There were footsteps in the hall, and then the door flew open. Boatswain bounded in. The door (which he had opened) slammed against the wall and startled him. He tried to scramble away from the noise and merely ended up knocking over the table on which the tub of flowers had rested. The delicate yellow cowslips surged upwards and then, with a great noisy clatter of table and tub, fell in a soft shower over the heads of Kitty and Elizabeth. Some even made it into the sugar-water.

Kitty, who had always been afraid of dogs the way Elizabeth had been afraid of horses, practically leapt onto the counter. Elizabeth moved to catch Boatswain, but ended up slipping on the flowers and sitting heavily on the floor, an event ridiculous enough to move her from tears to a snort of laughter. This was less alarming of a tableau for Miss Darcy to observe when arriving quickly at a room, and at least a better smelling one. The sweet, apricot-like scent of the crushed and stewed blossoms surrounded them all, driving away the lingering memory of Waterloo. Georgiana went at once to call Boatswain to order and Darcy, in his shirtsleeves, appeared in the doorway, backlit by the candles.

“Elizabeth!” he exclaimed, and was by her side in seconds. She held out her hand; he pulled her to her feet and surveyed her anxiously. “You look far from well.”

“Oh you flatterer,” said Elizabeth, amused out of her earlier agitation.

Darcy looked harassed. “That is not what I— ”

“I know! I am well. Boatswain makes a very poor stillroom maid, that is all.”

Darcy brushed off some of the yellow cowslip petals from the shoulders of Elizabeth’s long-sleeved gown of lilac cambric, and the folds of the gauzy white _fichu_ she wore over it. “I am sorry,” he said, stiffly. “Elizabeth— ” Elizabeth took a moment to appreciate how he said her Christian name in this moments, when he was struggling with his own reserve to try and comfort her; as gentle and tentative as the first caress offered to an unknown cat one would like to befriend “— I ought to have thought—  the smell. I gave my coat over to the laundrymaid to be washed. The smell reminded me of Hougoumont too.”

Elizabeth felt her expression freeze, and a sickening lurch in her midsection, as if she had tried to put her weight on a stair that was not there. She had fallen through the worn barrier against her grief, against the head-long tumble into misery. ‘I am past this,’ Elizabeth thought, but then came, plaintive as Ophelia’s songs, ‘He is dead and gone lady, he is dead and gone—’

Darcy had been about to remove a blossom from the curls at her right temple but, seeing her expression, instead moved his hand under her widow's veil, cupped the back of her head in his hand, and pressed her face to his shoulder. Elizabeth squeezed her eyes shut and fisted a hand in the folds of his cravat. Darcy tucked the top of her head under his chin, a familiar hold from Brussels and said, in the same, low, rough voice he used then, “I can never forget it either.”

Georgiana and Kitty had been no doubt alarmed by all this, too alarmed to say anything until Georgiana asked, tentatively, “Did you—  did you see Hougoumont yourself, brother?”

“Yes,” he said, tightly. “Mrs. Fitzwilliam was dying some gowns black. I thought, perhaps, if I went to see— ”

Wiping her eyes on the soft muslin of his shirt, Elizabeth said, “Oh Darcy, I would have told you not to go, if I had known. I hope it has not haunted you, as it has haunted me.”

Darcy gently stroked the hair at the nape of her neck, something that had soothed her since earliest childhood. “I would not have you bear it alone.” Then, with unexpected honesty, “I would not have listened to you, anyhow. My own grief would not allow me to do anything less than visit the battlefield.”

“Of course not. Insufferable man! And yet, I have no idea how I would get on without you. Darcy, you are too good to knowingly frighten me again like that; will you promise me not to poke at fires in future?”

“A promise very easily given,” said Darcy, rather dryly. “It was not my intention to set myself on fire. I shall avoid it in future; it was an unpleasant experience.”

It was a very clumsy attempt at a joke, but Elizabeth laughed at it none-the-less. She did not move from the circle of his arms. He had not really held her since they had left Matlock, and Elizabeth was surprised at how much she had missed it. He had the knack of holding someone so that they felt supported without feeling trapped. She closed her eyes and felt the tension that had sparked along her shoulder blades slowly draining from her.

She had almost forgotten the presence of everyone else when Boatswain bumped apologetically at the back of her legs. Elizabeth clung onto Darcy until she regained her balance, and then said, “Oh alright, I know you were as anxious about Darcy as I was!”

Feeling oddly reluctant to let go, Elizabeth forced herself to move away, and to survey the mess of cowslips about her. She felt a hand on her hair; Darcy had removed the blosom that had earlier caught his attention.

“Don’t say anything,” said Elizabeth, holding her hands up in mock fear of his censure. “I know I look a fright. You and your dog are entirely to blame.”

“You hardly look a fright,” said Darcy. “I think you are perfectly aware that wearing flowers in your hair has always suited you.”

Georgiana sighed and Elizabeth laughed. “Darcy, I do not think you know how to pay a compliment!”

“He doesn’t,” Georgiana said glumly.

“At least your brother is honest! I am always perfectly aware of his sincerity when expressing an opinion.” Elizabeth smiled at Kitty, who still had an anxious eye on Boatswain. “Kitty my dear, really, you needn’t be quite so worried about Boatswain. We have just established that Darcy is scrupulously honest. Sir, will Boatswain hurt my sister?”

“Boatswain will never hurt anything, including the waterfowl he was bred to fetch,” said Darcy. “Which is part of the reason my uncle was not reluctant to part with him.”

They talked of more indifferent subjects and cleaned the stillroom, until a maid brought back Mr. Darcy’s coat. It smelled reassuringly of laundry soap and starch. Elizabeth tucked a spring of cowslip in the lapel before handing it over. To her slight surprise, Darcy reached for her hand rather than his coat and, pressing it, said, “You asked me once, to show you that you are not alone in what you feel. I cannot say it is a request that is easy for me to fulfill, but I—  I hope you know that you are not alone in this; you are not the only person who has been changed so much by what they've seen, that they cannot bear the scent of smoke.”

His tinkering with the fireplace made more sense. Elizabeth pressed his hand and said, “I am glad we finally see eye to eye, Darcy. We have taken long enough.”

***

Elizabeth was still rather anxious and out of sorts the next day. The Tilneys had not liked to leave her while she was still so upset and unsettled, but Mr. Tilney could not be away from his parish more than three weeks. They parted with many promises of long letters, and with Elizabeth sneaking sweets into the pockets of all the children. She could not hide how glum she felt; Marjorie tried to cheer her, but did not succeed. It was not until she could offer the news that the Fitzwilliams had been included in Lady Caroline Lamb’s revenge against society, a rather too obvious _roman-a-clef_ called _Glenarvon,_ that Elizabeth was diverted out of her melancholia.

The heroine, Calantha (Lady Caroline Lamb so thinly disguised even the most exhibitionist courtesan at a masked ball would be embarrassed), was persecuted by the literally Byronic hero of the title, at a dinner given by the “Earl of Morekey, or rather, at the home of his daughter-in-law, Lady Seylee.” Lady Caroline went on to write:

_Lord Morekey had not much use for his daughters, whom he all sent away, as soon as it could be easily contrived, but with his son’s wives, he was excessively pleased, for it proved his sons were, respectively, neither as stupid or as scandalous as first appearances would suggest. More valuable than rubies, a good wife! Lady Seylee was the crown jewel of His Lordship’s collection, with his second son’s wife, Mrs. Fothingham, an equally valued ornament, though not in the least of equal provenance, for His Lordship’s sister had prised Mrs. Fothingham out of the Kentish countryside and provided the necessary polish to make her worthy of display for as long as half the year. Lady Seylee had the honor of year round display. She welcomed Calantha with all the shows of friendliness and few of the actual practices, for she always arranged her table to amuse herself— indeed, there was no other amusement for her, at so moralistic a table as the one presided over by her father-in-law— and to that end had given Lord Glenarvon to understand he was to lead in the lovely Calantha...._

Elizabeth read this with some amusement and alarm. “I am not sure I like what she wrote about my husband. How open a secret was it that he was...?”

“Lady Catherine did not precisely censure herself as I would have wished after your marriage.”

Elizabeth well remembered Lady Catherine’s loquaciousness on _that_ subject. “This is a little better than Mr. Elliot's characterization of me; I am not terrifically offended. But I am a little offended she called _you_ a false friend! Is she not your relation?”

“I regret to say that Caro and I are cousins,” said Marjorie. “We were rather closer at one point. I was initially quite in favor of her marrying poor William Lamb, for I thought his mother might knock some discretion into Caro, but that was not to be. She was entirely blind to the benefits of having Lady Melbourne as a mother-in-law.”

Elizabeth was not sure what benefits could be gained from having Lady Melbourne as a mother-in-law, given that a perennially popular _bon mot_ amongst high society was some variation of “Who fathered her children?” “Certainly not Lord Melbourne.” But Elizabeth supposed she was still too much of a country squire’s daughter at heart to be entirely comfortable with the easy way the aristocracy traded partners. Her ideal was still a committed and loving monogamy.

“I was unwise enough to tell Caro she ought to have learnt from her mother-in-law’s example, after a particularly tedious afternoon of complaints about Lord Byron and Mr. Lamb. Caro took against me as a result... though her revenge I find rather clumsy. She decries Lord Matlock’s table as moralistic, and then asserts that a character certainly not Lord Byron sits at it to dinner! I suppose she meant to foist upon our poor father-in-law a dinner guest he would not nod to in the street."

"What has the Earl of Matlock done to offend her so?"

"He has not allowed Caro to come here since her behavior at Lady Heathcote’s ball three seasons ago.”

“I think I was in Spain then. What happened?”

“Oh, so you were! Lady Caroline smashed a wine glass and tried to use the broken stem to cut off her soulmark and literally fling it in Byron’s face. Lady Melbourne tore off her turban and managed to wrap it around Caro’s wrist, but then Caro seized Byron’s arm and revealed to everyone the ‘Leigh’ written there, and then Caro fainted dead away. Apparently he hadn’t even shown _her_ his mark when they were sharing a bed! It was all dreadfully exciting. Stornoway nearly spilt his wine on himself, when he saw it all happen.”

“Are we mentioned elsewhere?”

“I complain with someone obviously Lady Jersey at the tiresomeness of married couples in love with each other, as she is too ugly and I am too cold to have ever inspired love in anyone, let alone our husbands, but you only have the half-sentence. I am very sorry, my dear, but that is what comes of being away on campaign!”

“I would gladly wash my hands of so much as a subclause,” said Elizabeth. “I hope you have hidden all this from His Lordship.”

“ _I_ did, but Stornoway blundered into it again. I cannot be too angry with him, the poor dear; he was very touchingly upset at Caro’s accusation that he did not love me. He was so offended he shewed the relevant passages to his father, and they are now drinking a great more than they ought to at White’s.”

“You seem more amused than angry.”

Marjorie laughed. “It is an accurate, if unflattering, portrait; one has to admire the skill it took to make it. And, you know, it would have been dreadfully embarrassing to go on a visit and be entirely unable to complain about how I was portrayed in _Glenarvon_ as everyone else was. Here comes your sister; do hide the book, I cannot think it is quite right for her to read it. She would show it to Georgiana, and we would never be forgiven _that_.”

Kitty came in perfectly ignorant of what was now amusing and occupying most of London; and was entirely bewildered to find their lordships in a cold fury all Friday and Saturday. Nor did she have any context for the cut direct the Earl gave Lady Caroline Lamb as they were walking out of church and into St. James’s Park that Sunday.

“Lizzy,” Kitty whispered, “what on earth—”

But then Lord Stornoway, rigid with displeasure, seized Marjorie’s hand. He pulled his wife away from where she was speaking with Lady Jersey, Mary Crawford, and Mrs. Grant.

“What is it, my lord?” Marjorie said, annoyed and confused.

Lord Stornoway dipped Marjorie into a dramatic kiss that would have been excessive on a Drury Lane stage. Marjorie was too startled to protest at this impropriety, and was still gaping at him when he released her.

Lord Stornoway made eye contact with Lady Caroline and, deliberately looking away, said,“My dear, beloved Marjorie, it _is_ rather tiresome, is it not, for unhappily married women to see a devotion that has not lost its strength in thirteen years?”

“Surely you have only been married twelve,” said Lady Jersey, a little confused.

“I fell quite hopelessly in love with Marjorie the first time I danced with her at Almack’s,” declared Lord Stornoway. He turned now to Elizabeth and said, loudly and deliberately, “My very dear sister-in-law, how is the Duke of Wellington? I know you are a very great favorite of his, for the devotion you showed my late brother, in choosing to follow Colonel Fitzwilliam into the very greatest danger.”

“His Grace is at present in Cambrai,” said Elizabeth, not entirely sure what was required of her.

“He writes to you,” said Lord Stonroway, leadingly.

“Oh! Yes, His Grace is very kind in that regard, and he is a diligent correspondent. His last was quite cheerful.”

“I know Lady Stornoway is happy to have you with her year round, and indeed, would have kept you with her while Colonel Fitzwilliam was still alive, had it not been for the earnest desire on both your part and my brother’s to be all the year together. Indeed, Lady Stornoway is the most excellent of friends; for those she truly loves, she would do anything.”

Elizabeth agreed to this, and risked a glance at Lady Caroline, who met her eyes with an expression of cool defiance.

Marjorie’s shock was now beginning to fade to a half-pleased embarrassment; she put her hand on Stornoway’s arm and said, “My dear, you are too kind to me! How good you are to praise me so publically. But your father has walked off; we must follow him.”

“My father,” said Lord Stornoway, desirous of answering every slander leveled at his family, “who is a very good man, who provided very well for all of his children, and enabled every single one of them to marry their soulmate. If _that_ is moralistic, then— then so should we all be!”

Marjorie gently towed him away, down the path. Elizabeth and Kitty were for a moment rooted to the spot in shock, but went quickly to follow them. Kitty risked a glance over her shoulder at Lady Jersey, who was speaking very long and in great confusion, at a stunned Mrs. Grant and a bemused Mary. Lady Caroline Lamb had walked away.

“Lizzy, what was that about?” Kitty asked.

“Lady Caroline published a novel which— unfortunately for her— everyone read, in order to learn all the scandalous details of her affair with Lord Byron. But her account had more to do with how all of her friends and family members failed her, than Lord Byron’s perfidy. An easy mistake for a first time novelist. I think she will have to come up with different subject matter for her second, as I doubt she will have any friends and family to blame after this.”

Kitty gawked at her. “ _No_! Do not tell me she insulted Lady Stornoway!”

“Multiple times. I even made it in, for half of a run-on sentence. I cannot think it quite right for you to give it to you to read—”

“I am turned twenty!” exclaimed Kitty, indignantly. “I am quite capable of reading a novel.”

“You will be dreadfully bored by her wildly inaccurate take on the Irish Rebellion of 1798, but so be it. It is on the little table by the fire, in my sitting room. I daresay if it went missing this afternoon, I would not notice.” They caught up with the Earl, and Lord and Lady Stornoway then, and Elizabeth fell silent. She was very afraid she might laugh at her brother-in-law’s well meant but ill thought out defiance, which would have embarrassed him, and therefore embarrassed Marjorie. Their walk through the park back to Matlock House was very silent, attended mostly by amused or speculative glances from other members of the _ton_.

They arrived in time for the servants to leave for their half-day holiday. Kitty ran up to Elizabeth’s parlor to get a start on _Glenarvon,_ Lord Matlock locked himself in his study, and Lord Stornoway, filled to the brim with familial pride, announced he would take the three children still in the nursery and walk them through the portrait gallery. Marjorie and Elizabeth were left in possession of the main sitting room, facing the street.

“I did not put him up to that,” said Marjorie, shutting the door to the vestibule.

“No one would have thought _that_.”

Marjorie looked at Elizabeth in some confusion. “No, you do not quite understand— I did not put Stornoway up to it. He acted purely of his own volition, following his own line of thinking. All out of love for me!” She went to the mirror and fluffing up the curls crushed by her bonnet, added, wonderingly, “I really thought I could not be surprised by Stornoway. I thought the contents of his mind to be entirely what I had put there. Well! It puts a different complexion on things.” She turned from the mirror with a smile. “It  is very heartening to see he is _capable_ of independent thought and action, even if he does not prefer to use that ability. I suppose even in his usual habits of dependence, one may see proof of devotion.”

Elizabeth tried very hard not to laugh; Marjorie actually did and said, “Oh, well! Perhaps it was not as perfect a match as yours, but I cannot regret it. It is very nice to be worshiped.”

“Even so publically?”

Marjorie’s look was rather droll. “Perhaps I would prefer a more private display, but as I was not the author, I cannot rearrange the words set on the page.” They heard a knock at the door. Marjorie went to the window, and lifting back the curtain to the window nearest the door, Marjorie exclaimed, “Callers, just now? I thought Stebbins had removed the knocker, when all the servants had gone.

Elizabeth followed Marjorie to the window and saw no less a person than Lady Jersey waiting there. “I cannot believe Silence followed us from church!” exclaimed Marjorie. “Though really, Caro was vicious to her, far more vicious than she was to me— and there is Lady Oxford! Was she watching Stornoway? I did not see her, but that does not mean she was not watching—”

They were quite deluged with callers, which was rather inconvenient, as there was no one to open the door but Elizabeth, and absolutely no one to take gloves and hats, or to bring up tea. The Earl of Matlock was extremely put out, and by breakfast the next morning, when Marjorie was summarizing her visitors’ complaints, was moved enough to exclaim,“This is in every way intolerable!”

“Nobody likes how Lady Caroline portrayed them, my lord,” said Marjorie, soothingly. “Dear Silence—” this being the ironic nickname of Lady Jersey, who never stopped talking “— was so upset by the way she was portrayed that she is going to revoke Caro’s voucher for Almack’s.”

Though this revenge spelled absolute social ruin, it did not appease His Lordship. “I am inclined,” said he, “to pay a visit to Sybil. I have never been to Tahiti. I previously thought it too long a journey from England. But I find the idea of being a sixmonth from England very pleasant.”

“Sir,” said Marjorie, soothingly, “much worse things were said about people other than yourself.”

Lord Matlock blustered a great deal and Elizabeth soon realized that he had been deeply hurt at the insinuation that he did not love his children. There was no doubt, an unacknowledged stirring of guilt that attended this, for he had not truly loved his second son until that son had been killed, and his treatment of Honoria was scarcely better. Elizabeth could not bring herself to speak openly about this, but hinted that Lady Honoria and Miss Duncan would appreciate a visit as well. She was met with half-formed excuses, a strained silence and then a sudden, “I ought to invite them to come with us.”

Marjorie was so shocked she poured tea into her saucer instead of the cup, and Elizabeth had to ask the Earl to repeat himself.

“We shall go as a family,” declared the Earl. “Stebbins! Go and fetch my steward. Let us think on the logistics of all this. And pen and paper— I must write Honoria.”

They were still at table, discussing all the practicalities of this when the Darcys (and Boatswain) arrived. They were offered coffee and cold ham, and attached themselves to the Bennets that were their particular friends. Georgianna and Kitty bent their heads together and engaged in a series of whispers where the names of various characters from _Glenarvon_ could be distinguished, and Elizabeth and Darcy embarked on a very similar conversation.

“Why this haste to go to Tahiti?” Darcy asked, when Elizabeth had finished describing that morning's conversation. “Sybil has been there five years without exciting enough interest for a family visit.”

“His Lordship does not like the insinuations leveled at him in _Glenarvon_ .” Elizabeth sketched these, delivering as much detail as she could from memory. Darcy grew quite pale with anger and said, in a tone of forced calm, “I do not know how Lady Caroline lives with herself; setting down such insults against people who have done nothing to her. _You_ can only have met her in passing; and I cannot conceive of anything you could have possibly said or done to deserve such public mockery of so common a choice as to follow the drum.”

Elizabeth protested with a laugh, “Darcy, really! I have suffered worse public characterizations just this February. I am touched you are so angry at a clause meant more to insult Marjorie and Lord Matlock than myself, but I must confess, it is a truer portrait than any other. At heart, I _am_ still an impertinent country miss who ought not to be overmuch in society. Lady Caroline only mistakes the cause. I grow frustrated without my long rambles through the woods— or long marches through enemy territory— and become perfectly impossible to live with.”

Darcy was still quite offended on her behalf, and Elizabeth quickly launched into a retelling of Stornoway’s antics after church, until he was calmer. He was able to ask with some semblance of composure what Lady Caroline’s response to this had been, and looked satisfied when Elizabeth told him Lady Jersey had decided to ban Lady Caroline from Almack's.

“Do you intend to go to to Tahiti?” Darcy asked, a little abruptly.

The idea of spending several months on a ship sounded in every way horrible to Elizabeth, and as intrigued as she was by the idea of so long a voyage to so interesting a destination, she had to admit she was not equal to the challenge. “I think perhaps I will go back with Kitty to Longbourn— though how I am then to get to the Bingleys this fall I am not entirely sure. Do you think I would excite a great deal of comment if I traveled by myself? I suppose I have the Pattinsons—”

“You and your sister might stay with me and Georgiana for the rest of the season,” said Darcy, as he fed Boatswain a slice of ham. “If you will come to Pemberley this summer, you will be but thirty miles from the Bingleys.”

Elizabeth felt herself flush, a little fearful lest she should be seen to be taking advantage of Darcy’s friendship for her, but Darcy, still intently focused on feeding ham to Boatswain added, “Georgiana has only been asking to have Miss Catherine stay with us since August. Usually I am prompter about satisfying her requests.”

“Oh, _well_ , if it is for Georgiana— I hope you can resign yourself to my teasing you at the breakfast table every morning.”

Darcy smiled, though he still focused his attention on Boatswain. “You will have to wait until after I have finished my coffee to get any kind of a response.”

“It shall be a struggle, but I shall do my poor best. Yes, thank you. I would be very happy to come live with you until the fall— and I think I can safely answer for Kitty. She will be equally happy to be in the same house as Georgiana.”

This arrangement suited everyone. The Stornoways turned over their children to Marjorie’s grandmother, the quite formidable Dowager Countess Spencer, Honoria and Miss Duncan accepted the invitation in a rather heart-felt series of letters, and Elizabeth dashed off a quick letter of her own to Wellington:

 _Your Grace was correct in my change of address, though perhaps not as you anticipated! My father-in-law was so enraged with the depiction of himself and his society in_ Glenarvon _he has decided to quit it entirely and visit Lady Sybil and Mr. Omai in Tahiti. Lord and Lady Stornoway go with him, and, perhaps suprisingly, Lady Honoria and Miss Duncan. I, alas, am the widow of an infantryman, not a sailor, and as I cannot march to Tahiti, but would have to sail, remain in England. I pray you will address your letters to Dacy House until 26 June, whereafter you must address them to Pemberley, in Derbyshire._

She added some further gossip about _Glenarvon_ and was a little annoyed that Wellington ignored all her outpourings of wit; he instead sent back quite a cheeky, short note:

_Mrs. Fitzwilliam (though I am still not convinced I shall be long addressing my letters to you as such)— pray assure me you have removed my wingback chair with your charming self and I shall write you wherever you like._

Elizabeth did not show this to Darcy (though she usually showed him most of her letters from Wellington) and almost did not show it to Marjorie. She was confused and embarrassed by the address, and could not account for it. Marjorie looked thoughtful, and turned over the page, in search of a postscript, but finding none, said, “Certainly you may take the chair with you. I wonder....” Then, abruptly, “My dear, I know it will embarrass you to hear this, but _should_ you decide to remarry while we are away, rest assured that when he returns, Matlock will dower you very handsomely. And if you talk to the lawyer, Mr. Knightley, I am sure you will find out how much your jointure is yours for life, but I know some funds in the five percent are yours forever, however many men you marry. Stornoway told me your father drove rather a hard bargain during the marriage settlements.”

“Marjorie—”

Though she was not a very physically demonstrative person, Marjorie put an arm about Elizabeth’s waist and said, “Selfishly, I hope you do not go _too_ far; it has been beyond a pleasure to have another intelligent person in the house. But, you know, I really do not think Richard was the sort of person to have wanted you to wear the willow forever. He would be very glad to see you happy, however you managed to become so. No more on that subject now, I promise— I see you are not quite ready to think on it.”

Elizabeth confusedly agreed to this.

 

***

 

The talk with Marjorie had rather unsettled her (and she had been in an odd mood to begin with) but in the flurry of planning and packing, Elizabeth did not have much time to dwell on it. It built into a continual, mild sense of discomfort, like having something stuck between her back teeth. Elizabeth would sometimes worry at it without being able to dislodge it, when she was sprawled in her empty bed, idly watching the moonlight advance through the bed curtains, over the pillow that had been Colonel Fitzwilliam’s.

The last night she was to spend in her room at Matlock House— the room she had always, previously shared with Colonel Fitzwilliam— she dared stretch her left hand out into the moonlight. Her wedding ring gleamed dull and cold. It still did not look quite right with its golden partner buried with its owner in Belgium.

So many things now were defined for her based on absence—  so many things had changed in ways she could not always describe, or make understood. It bothered her, she realized, that people were hinting and insinuating that she was tired of this lack, and could fill it up. They were partly right—  Elizabeth  _was_ tired of being defined by lack—  but there were some absences that she could never fill; she felt she might always trip up and accidentally fall into them. She would never be able to smell burning cloth without thinking of Hougoumont just after the battle. She would never be able to forget Hougoumont. Elizabeth rolled over and flung her left arm over her eyes. Darcy seemed to be the only person who understood this, and even he had trouble expressing it. Elizabeth wondered if Marjorie’s advice, of surrounding herself with people who truly saw her, would be quite impossible. Could anyone quite comprehend the mass of contradictions she had become—  perhaps had always been? She did not entirely understand herself at times.

Elizabeth was exhausted by the time the Fitzwilliams left, and all the pomp that attended their departure rather wore on her uncertain temper. She was extremely sarcastic about _Glenarvon_ during the carriage ride home, not really caring that Georgiana and Kitty technically should not have read it, and had worked herself up into a fine temper by the time they arrived at Darcy House. It was surprising to Elizabeth that this mood did not last. The Darcy siblings immediately suggested resting before dinner (as both of them were rather weary at being around so many people for so long), and when Elizabeth went up to her room, she was astonished to see how exactly suited to her needs and tastes it was. It overlooked the formal gardens rather than the road, and was fitted up with a neatness and elegance that characterized the whole house. The silk panels were of her favorite, jonquil shade of yellow; there were Wedgewood vases filled with wildflowers on every table; there was a small bookshelf next to her fireplace, full of de Vega and Shakespeare plays (and a volume of Byron's _The Giaour_ cleverly hidden behind them); and the pictures hung on the walls were some of the landscapes she always complimented when she visited Darcy House.

Her bad mood lifted, especially when she went down to the still room, out of curiosity, and learnt that Mr. Darcy had given explicit instruction to the staff that this room and its contents now fell under her purview. It further cheered her to discover the still room opened onto the kitchen gardens and greenhouses. She had a really splendid walk about, and was knocking the mud off her boots when Darcy found her.

“Everything is to your satisfaction?” he asked, a little anxiously.

Elizabeth smiled at him. “Yes—  you and Georgiana seem to have taken a prodigious deal of care over all these arrangements. Kitty was asleep when I knocked on her door, but I am sure her room as as fitted to her as mine is to myself.  I am—  I think I am more than satisfied.”

Darcy smiled. “You are comfortable?”

It occurred to Elizabeth that she had not run mad during the whole dreadful time with her father-in-law because of _Darcy_ —  because Darcy had been there, quietly arranging things, showing, in every action, no matter how small, that he saw her, truly saw her, in all her aspects, light and dark. He understood her in ways no one else living did.

“More than that,” said Elizabeth. She tested the phrase in her head before saying it, and only released it into the tidy still room, fragrant with cut flowers when she knew it to be true: “I am happy."


	14. In which a long anticipated event occurs

Though Elizabeth thought there might be some initial awkwardness with the Darcys, she found it to be in every way preferable to living with the Fitzwilliams. The Darcy relations were scanty and scattered— his great-uncle the judge; this lord chief justice’s daughter and her husband (a wealthy gentleman whose estate in Cornwall kept them from visiting London much); and some second cousins in the Lake District comprised the whole. Fitzwilliam Darcy and Georgiana Darcy were more often than not the only family the other saw— which, after the continuous togetherness and tiffs of the Fitzwilliams, was very much a relief.

The Darcys’ style of living was equally fine as the Fitzwilliams’, but a great deal less ostentatious. They dined _en famille_ more than they did in company, and the sound of Georgiana’s really superior playing, rather than politics, echoed through the house. It was pleasant to be so often surrounded by music, like something precious wrapped in cotton. Elizabeth felt truly at ease, for perhaps the first time since Waterloo.

True, she missed the company of Marjorie, and Mary did not visit quite so often (as Darcy’s tendency to loom disapprovingly by the mantel as he listened to, rather than join any conversation between Elizabeth and Mary was not as inviting as Marjorie’s graciousness and discreet gossip), but Darcy insisted several times Elizabeth must always feel free to receive her friends, and so she did. It rather delighted Elizabeth that Darcy made a sincere effort with all her military acquaintances in particular; and, to Elizabeth’s surprise, he took a shine to Colonel Dunne.

Colonel Fitzwilliam’s regiment had been obliterated by Waterloo, and disappeared from the lists altogether; some officers had been re-assigned to regiments who had suffered their own losses, some had gone on half-pay. Colonel Dunne was in the latter camp, and had come to London more to see if Whitehall would reassign him than for any other reason. He had run into Elizabeth there while she and Darcy were carrying over some last letters and files from Matlock House about the Royal Army Medical Corps, and they had fallen at once into their old intimacy. Elizabeth was delighted to have fresher news of everyone in the regiment than she herself had, and felt rather guilty that she had not done more for the other Waterloo widows. It had been her long-standing offer among the camp followers (at least, to those who practiced a profession other than ‘the oldest’) to write letters of reference for any desired posting, and at the news of every death amongst the officers she wrote a pretty letter of condolence to the officers’ widows, with a guinea under the seal; but she had been so lost in her grief, she had had fulfilled these promises haphazardly. She was eager to repair her wrongs. Colonel Dunne was eager to have a project. They kept busily at it for a week, which Elizabeth used as an excuse to avoid going on too many society visits. She did not like doing so without Marjorie just yet, and with Georgiana and Kitty to watch over in addition, and thought to ease herself into the stream of social engagements before diving in headfirst.

Darcy sometimes accompanied them about town, listening their shared reminisces, and smiling at their somewhat idiosyncratic complaints about the expense of arrowroot or long debates on whether or not a receipt Elizabeth got from one of her many correspondents was worthy of being tested. Darcy even began to contribute to the conversations, after only four days— so short a length of time that Elizabeth was astonished. She had never seen him warm up to strangers so quickly. But this was to a purpose: the hospital Darcy had been building at Lambton was now complete, and he needed someone to run it. As Colonel Pascal was unwilling to leave the Coldstream Guards, Colonel Dunne was Darcy’s choice.

“The only restriction I would make upon you, sir,” said Darcy, “is to help Colonel Pascal in an experiment he proposed, to try and understand the effect of vinegar on limiting infection.”

Colonel Dunne’s gaze flicked kindly to Elizabeth, who had been feeling gloomy that day, and put on a black instead of a gray or purple gown. Elizabeth looked up from the tea she was pouring with a rueful smile.

“I should consider it a great favor if I might be of any assistance in that endeavor,” said Colonel Dunne.

“You will not miss marching with a regiment?” Elizabeth asked.

“Oh, aye, as much as you miss following the drum, I imagine,” said Colonel Dunne. “But I must confess to feeling considerable relief at the idea of having a hospital that will not blow over in the middle of a bad thunderstorm.”

“We remove to Pemberley in June,” said Darcy, “but if you wish to go earlier, to look at the hospital, I will instruct my steward to attend you.”

“I should like a last taste of the civilization of Dublin, before moving more permanently to the wilds of Derbyshire, sir,” said Colonel Dunne, “but if you’ve no objection, I should like to see the hospital when all the construction is completed, in... late May, I believe you said?”

“Yes. I shall instruct my steward to find a house for you in the area, if you have no objection.”

“None at all,” said Colonel Dunne, very pleased. “It is very good of you, sir, to see to my billet.”

“It is good of you,” Darcy said gravely, “to agree to this position on so short an acquaintance.”

“Short, sir? I have known you by reputation for years. All I need—” with a short bow to Elizabeth “—is Mrs. Fitzwilliam’s vouching for you, sir, as one of the best men of her acquaintance.”

To Elizabeth’s surprise, Darcy blushed at this second-hand praise. Elizabeth kindly forebore to tease him until after Colonel Dunne had left.

 

***

 

Elizabeth, Kitty, and the Darcys were not very long in London, however, before Lady Catherine issued her usual Easter summons to Rosings. Elizabeth seriously contemplated coming down with measles, or potentially smallpox, but to balance out the horrors of seeing Lady Catherine would be the very great pleasure of once more seeing Charlotte, and the Darcys could not conceive of disappointing any relation, even one as disagreeable as Lady Catherine. Elizabeth thought they might escape even this when Darcy discovered he was not to bring Boatswain, but duty won over dog ownership.

And so they set out.

Darcy grew steadily quieter the farther they got into Kent, and Elizabeth found herself in sympathy with him. She was not looking forward to hearing Lady Catherine or Mr. Collins’ opinions on Colonel Fitzwilliam’s death, on the Earl of Matlock’s bill, or her own (entirely undeserved) recognition in the House of Commons as a model of female delicacy.

A horrible thought occurred to her. She and Darcy had sat together, facing backwards (it looked too like rain for Darcy to ride), and now she moved her elbow slightly, to touch his arm.

He looked away from the window, and said, tersely. “Yes?”

“No one told Lady Catherine about _Glenarvon,_ did they, Darcy?”

This had not occurred to Darcy. His look of muted horror was proof enough of that.

Georgiana and Kitty looked up from the much battered but much beloved traveling chess set Elizabeth had loaned them, with identical expressions of alarm.

“I did not tell her,” said Georgiana quickly. “Did you brother?”

Darcy shook his head.

“Surely,” said Kitty, uncertainly, “Lady Catherine would not think it proper to read such a book. She did not know anything Lord Byron had written, Lydia said.”

“No, but I am haunted by the horrible suspicion someone summarized it to her in a letter,” said Elizabeth, with a shudder. “It seems exactly like the sort of thing Lady Metcalfe, or old Mrs. Ferrars would do. I know Marjorie avoided any mention of it when writing to say they were all going to Tahiti, but I am not sure either of their lordships had the same sense of discretion.”

Darcy groaned.

 

***

Unfortunately, Mrs. Ferrars had not only written to Lady Catherine, but sent her a copy of the book, and dogearred the pages whenever the Fitzwilliams were mentioned. Charlotte was good enough to send a note ahead, warning Elizabeth of this fact, but it did not entirely prepare her for Lady Catherine's fury.

“To think,” raged Lady Catherine, hacking away at a pineapple in a way that Elizabeth, who had grown up in a neighborhood where pineapples were to be rented for display, not eaten, found quite horrifying, “that a lady who has forsaken all claims of dignity and propriety, who should not even be called a lady, should dare raise her pen against our family!”

“She raised her pen against half the ton, Aunt Catherine,” said Elizabeth, soothingly. “And I thought she wrote very kindly of you, all things considered.”

Darcy scowled. He still disliked the passage about Elizabeth.

“But to say my brother, _my brother_ ,” continued on Lady Catherine, “did not properly care any of his daughters, when he brought them up with the strictest propriety! No expense was spared, no detail of their upbringing or outings not discussed at length with his wife and both his sisters! He took a prodigious deal of care of them. His daughters were each accompanied by two manservants when they drove out, and a maid and a footman when they walked out. Two of his daughters made quite excellent matches abroad.” She considered her sliver of pineapple with displeasure. “Matlock could not help how Honoria turned out, but he did his best to correct it—”

Seeing the four visitors look either shocked or offended by this, Mrs. Jenkins asked if it was true that Lady Caroline Lamb had been banned from Almack’s.

“Oh yes!” exclaimed Elizabeth. “Marjorie had it from Lady Jersey, who is her great friend, and I had it from the Countess Lieven, who is one of mine.”

“How came you to befriend the wife of the Russian Ambassador?” asked Lady Catherine, who was never sure if she approved of foreigners, even if they were from allied nations.

“Through the Duke of Wellington, ma’am.”

The mention of a national hero, who claimed to dislike Napoleon because “Boney wasn’t a gentleman,” appeased Lady Catherine somewhat, though Darcy’s scowl now seemed deeply etched.

Elizabeth ignored him. Darcy was always impossible to manage at Rosings, especially upon first arriving there. She and Colonel Fitzwilliam had often shaken their heads over it. “I think you would like the Countess Lieven, ma’am. Her bearing is almost as dignified as yours.”

Kitty snorted. Georgiana pretended it was a sneeze and said, “God bless you!” quickly enough to keep Lady Catherine from realizing it wasn’t.  

“Have you heard recently from your sister, Miss Lydia Bennet?” Lady Catherine asked, taking this as a compliment.

“Not recently, madame— in fact, I owe her a letter.”

Lady Catherine spent the rest of the courses talking about Lydia’s adventures in China, and congratulating herself as if she had built by hand the ship that had taken Lydia to Canton.

After dinner, Mr. and Mrs. Collins came for tea, and Mr. Collins spent the entire time delivering a sermon Elizabeth could not help but hate. Mr. Collins spoke long in praise of some imaginary Colonel Fitzwilliam, who was dutiful, unthinkingly patriotic, and apparently destined from his cradle to Die For England. Mrs. Collins did her best to intervene, but each time she and Elizabeth tried to sneak away for a quick coze, Lady Catherine took up Mr. Collins’s theme.

Mrs. Collins gave up and eventually pleaded indisposition (she was once again increasing), and bore off Mr. Collins before Elizabeth could something she would later regret, or before Darcy smashed the window he was staring out of and disappear into the park, as he was evidently longing to do.

“We shall talk later,” said Charlotte, embracing Elizabeth. “But Lizzy— I am so, so sorry. There aren’t words enough to convey it.”

Elizabeth squeezed shut her watering eyes and held tightly to Charlotte. “Thank you.”

Charlotte pulled back, with a faint half-smile. “What do you say we escape on a walk as soon as Lady Catherine can spare you?”

This was agreed to, and Elizabeth, recalling Lydia’s letter, begged Lady Catherine's leave to go and respond to it. This was granted... after a long speech on obligations and the horrible slowness of international post. Miss DeBourgh was tired (or at least, was declared so by Lady Catherine, when she had finished denigrating the international postal service), and the Rosings party all retired early. The Darcys followed Elizabeth and Kitty to the library with patent relief.

It was surprisingly hard to write to Lydia of the events of Waterloo. Elizabeth put down her usual spiel on Hougoumont, but did not know what to say about how she felt about it. Kitty, seeing her distress, came over and suggested this or that piece of local gossip, or news of this or that play or ball she and Elizabeth had attended. In this fashion, they contrived to fill up a second page, and Elizabeth could even conclude, ‘I confess, I have never known such pain or such misery, as after Hougoumont. For quite some time, my devastation was complete indeed. But by degrees, my spirits are improving. I hope when we next see you, to be the same, cheerful Lizzy you saw this time last year.’

The events of the evening had left her ill-inclined to speak; she picked up a book and hoped to pass the rest of the evening that way. However, Kitty and Georgianna could not be in a room together for very long without talking to each other, and were soon complaining about their books. 

“My book is not very exciting,” said Georgiana, causing Darcy to look up from his own. “Do you think Lady Catherine would let me read her copy of _Glenarvon_?”

“I highly doubt that,” said Elizabeth, with a laugh.

“ _Glenarvon_ was not a very good novel, was it?” Kitty asked.

“No, but people do not read it for that,” said Elizabeth. “They read it to see themselves in its pages.”

“Is that why people read novels then, to see themselves in those pages?” Georgianna asked.

“Why, Georgianna, that was quite profound,” said Elizabeth, quite startled. “Yes, I suppose so. Though perhaps not as literally as with _Glenarvon_. I always did think a person’s favorite book spoke most eloquently of their character.”

“How so?” Kitty asked, quite fascinated.

Elizabeth involuntarily thought of how _Les liaisons dangereux_ was Mary Crawford’s favorite novel but said, “Well, Papa’s is _Tristam Shandy_. It reflects that he likes absurdity, questions conventional narrative, likes a joke over anything else, and at every opportunity— but have you read the novel, Kitty?”

Kitty confessed that she had not.

“No,” said Elizabeth, realizing she probably oughtn’t to have read a novel subtitled “a cock and bull story” either. “Uhm— Colonel Fitzwilliam loved Perrault’s _contes de fee_. You've read those, surely?” Kitty had, so Elizabeth continued, “That—besides shewing he was brought up in an aristocratic household and rather too educated, to be reading in French for pleasure as he did— also showed what sort of humor he had. It was always dry and somewhat sly, and he tended towards wit and wordplay than any other kind of joke. He understood his society and though not a revolutionary, he was sometimes quite critical of it.”

“He liked clever women,” added Darcy, unexpectedly.

Elizabeth laughed. “A very kind compliment! Thank you, Darcy.”

Darcy muttered something about it being true, and lapsed into silence once again.

“And,” finished Elizabeth, returning to her theme, “the colonel was a romantic at heart. Like any of Perrault’s heroes or heroines, he would plunge into the worst sort of situations believing everything would turn out alright. Perhaps not with the same fortitude— he liked to grumble— but with the same insistence it would all shake out somehow.” Elizabeth felt wistful; she half expected to turn and see Colonel Fitzwilliam embarrassed and protesting, trying to turn her character study into some compliment to her.

“What is your favorite novel, Cousin Elizabeth?” Georgiana asked.

“ _Evelina_ — or, rather, I used to love it best before Colonel Fitzwilliam died, but now I prefer _Cecilia_ . I admit that a lot of it is fairly ridiculous, and the death count is absurdly high for England during peacetime, but Mr. Gosport’s cataloging of the _ton_ always makes me smile. And oh! I weep every time I read about Cecilia's husband dashing across the Channel to be beside her at her lowest point, and all ends happily for the penitent lovers, who have learnt something— although sometimes I am not clear on what— about overcoming their pride and prejudice, and they end up together, as happy philanthropists. Before Darcy accuses me of intentional misreading, I know the moral is supposed to be ironic, but I was already being witty at the book's expense so I thought I ought to continue on my theme. What do you all make of _that?”_

“That you saw something of yourself in a heroine who, at twenty, fell in love and married well,” said Darcy, grumpily. “That is no very great stretch of the imagination.”

“I really do not see myself in Cecilia,” Elizabeth chided him, a little piqued at his continuing bad mood. “For one, I was nearly portionless when I married, not a grand heiress, and for another, I have no knack for philanthropy beyond what is generally expected. I also would not act in the same self-sacrificing manner as Cecilia did. If some relation of the man I wished to marry tried to convince me against it, I would abuse him, or her, in language so violent I would later be very ashamed of it, and do what I desired, not what was desired of me.”

Darcy glowered.  

Perhaps it was unwise to bring up old quarrels, when Darcy was in such a mood, but during the course of the novel Cecilia went so mad with grief the people who found her had to put an advertisement in the newspaper, asking if anyone’s relation had escaped an asylum. Even in the worst of her grief, Elizabeth had not thought she would ever be near to losing her reason, and was piqued at the implication. (Later that evening, she realized that Darcy was probably in a mood because Rosings was the last place he had seen Colonel Fitzwilliam conscious. She penned a very pretty note of apology to Darcy, after ruining the first two with tears.)

“Well what of _Evelina_?” asked Kitty, clearly uncomfortable with the turn the conversation had taken. “I think that shows that you like society, but like to laugh at it as much as to take part in it— and that you like conversation!” At the slightly surprised, slightly impressed looks from the rest of the party, Kitty protested, “Most of the book is dialogue!”

“And she is a good correspondent,” added Georgiana, triumphant. “For the book is all letters.” She turned to Darcy, “What is your favorite book, Fitzwilliam?”

Being determined to be disobliging, Darcy first offered the collected works of Marcus Aurelius.

“A novel, I mean,” said Georgiana.

“ _Tom Jones,_ ” said Darcy, quite unexpectedly.

“I haven’t read that,” said Kitty, disappointed.

Elizabeth was rather surprised by this answer, but said, “Ah— I believe that in Squire Allworthy you must see your father.” A little more reflection caused her to think of the struggles of the two main characters— Tom Jones, whose flawed good nature was reformed by loving his true match, and Bilfold, whose hypocrisy eventually lead to his downfall— were perhaps not too far from the dual history of Darcy and Wickham. But this seemed to personal a thing to say aloud, so Elizabeth concluded, more prosaically, “I think this a clear argument of your complexity— that or you have a secret fondness for the Scottish Highlands and Bonnie Prince Charlie that you have cleverly hid all these years.”

“What is _Tom Jones_ about?” Kitty asked.

Elizabeth tried her best to explain an eighteen volume novel in two minutes but gave up the attempt and said, “I think you just have to read it, Kitty.”

Kitty did, but did not much care for it, and was soon complaining of this plot device or that character choice, and was so long at it, when Elizabeth just wished to enjoy a walk with Charlotte that Elizabeth exclaimed, “Kitty, if you dislike the novel that much—”

“I do not dislike it,” protested Kitty. “I just think it could be better than it is.”

“Then write your own version, my dear,” said Elizabeth. “It is what Virgil did when he found _The Iliad_ wanting.”

And Kitty did. Elizabeth was surprised that Kitty should so take to writing, when she had never much applied herself to her studies before, but after a few false starts, Kitty wrote quite a charmingly silly piece of juvenilia, ending _Tom Jones_ neatly and about three hundred thousand words before Fielding did. She enjoyed this so much, she was wild to write a novel of her own. “I want to write _Tom Jones_ only set now, with better female characters,” was her earnest declaration.

“I am afraid the Scottish highlands really are no more,” said Elizabeth. “That cannot offer you a good background conflict.”

“What about Waterloo?” Kitty asked.

“As the battle proper lasted only a day, you would either have a very short book, or a very busy day! More of a French farce than an English novel, all told.”

Charlotte, who was walking with them, said, pragmatically, “What of the Spanish campaign then? You have a source readily available to you.”

“Oh no,” Elizabeth protested.

Kitty gasped. “Oh, that would be very marvelous! Oh do say yes, Lizzy!”

Elizabeth realized she would have no peace unless she gave in. “Oh alright, Kitty. But do not make your heroine the wife of an English colonel. A subclause in _Glenarvon_ is all the literary fame I desire.”

***  

It was harder to be at Rosings than she had anticipated, for Charlotte was too busy with her children and husband to have much time for her, and Elizabeth's usual escapes out of doors brought Elizabeth no relief at all. The weather was bad, the spring very late. And every lane, every part of the park, every country walk reminded her of Colonel Fitzwilliam. Some days she enjoyed it. One day she consoled herself for one of Lady Catherine’s long, self-congratulatory speeches by walking back and forth in the lane where she and her husband had first kissed, shaking her head at her own audacity; and smiling at the memory of Colonel Fitzwilliam’s look of startled wonder, as if her kiss, inexperienced and chaste as it was, had been the sort of thing that lifted curses in fairy tales _._ From there she was lead to a host of pleasanter associations— how he’d read to her from Perrault whenever she was seasick and feeling sorry for herself, and hadn’t the attention for novels; his habit of calling her his _belle au bois dormant_ whenever she slept in after a particularly grueling march or action; how he’d nicknamed his favorite stable cat at Matlock Mr. Boots— and was able to return to Rosings smiling. But other days she felt her grief so acutely, the tears and agitations they caused gave her a sick headache.

Towards the end of their visit, Elizabeth was wandering (“lonely as a cloud,” she had joked to Georgiana, who was very fond of Wordsworth), and came across the spot where Colonel Fitzwilliam had proposed.

How young she had been then! How horribly unaware of what was to come! Elizabeth sat down heavily on the log and hid her face in her hands. If she closed her eyes for long enough, perhaps Colonel Fitzwilliam would still be kneeling in the lane before her, resigned to the semi-recumbent position to which her tears and trembling knees had forced him, if he wished to remain on eye level with her. But the storm of tears passed, her rational self asserted that Colonel Fitzwilliam was not there, and her breathing eventually slowed.

‘I will never quite get over this,’ Elizabeth thought, hiding her red eyes and tear-stained face in her hands. But then came a thought that sounded very much like Charlotte: ‘But that does not mean I will be this unhappy forever.’

“Elizabeth?”

It was Darcy; Elizabeth wiped her eyes with her gloves and raised a hand to him. “Darcy! Hello. I was merely brooding.”

Darcy looked his confusion. “On what?”

“On why is grief is so difficult to understand.”

“What do you mean?”

“There is no logic to it! In London I was beginning to feel almost myself again and here— oh! It is as if no time at all had passed since returning from Brussels, some days. Why can I not be normal—” And then she stopped, a little surprised at herself.

Darcy looked pained as he surveyed the log, but sat down beside her.

“You know,” said Elizabeth, testing the words in her head before she said them, “I expected I should wish to be in blacks and feel my grief forever. But I do not wish to any longer. Do you think that very wrong in me?”

“No,” said Darcy. “No one truly wishes to be unhappy forever.”

This seemed to be spoken as much to himself as to her; Elizabeth regarded the lane before them without really seeing it. She had not really though about Darcy’s disappointments since earlier that summer, when she had realized Marjorie was not his match. She wondered now about it— how long he had been unhappy, and whether there was any hope, or would be. Perhaps he identified with Tom Jones for more than Wickham’s hypocrisy— had he really thought himself changed by the love of his true match? “May I ask you a personal question, Darcy? You do not have to answer it, and if it embarasses you unduly, we can pretend I asked you what your favorite flower is.”

“Cowslips,” said Darcy, “but I take it that was not the question you wished to ask.”

Elizabeth smiled, despite herself. “Very well— you mentioned once, rather a long time ago, that you had met your soulmate but been unable to marry her— or him, I do not mean to assume—”

“Her,” said Darcy.

Elizabeth carefully avoided looking at him, so as not to add to his obvious embarrassment. “You could not marry her, and therefore had to live without her— how on earth could you bear it?”

Darcy was silent for so long, Elizabeth gave up expecting a response. She began to try and think up a more innocuous question about the weather or the park about them, when Darcy at last said, “I had to. So I did.”

Elizabeth plucked a handful of buttercups from beside the log and began pulling off their petals. She badly wanted to make Darcy talk, but knew he would not do so under scrutiny; she badly wanted to offer sympathy, but knew it would mortify him. She said softly, gently, “Oh Darcy.”

“You must not think I was very desperately unhappy the entire time I... struggled,” said Darcy, haltingly. “I had my friends, I had Georgiana, I had the Fitzwilliams. I had my great-uncle and his children, my cousins. And I had Pemberly to run, and the poor hospital to found. Because one aspect of my life did not work out how I wished it, did not mean the rest of my life was ruined.”

“That is very sensible! It strikes me as a great deal more comfortable to be a man disappointed in love than a woman.”

“I could offer you proofs enough to the contrary,” said Darcy, so quietly Elizabeth could not tell if he was joking or serious.

She took it as the latter, just to be safe and said, “I only mean that you are allowed to be active. As Olympe de Gouges pointed out, women are not, or only in a limited way. We may be active in the service of husbands, fathers, brother, uncles— we may not be active for ourselves. When we are without our soulmates, it is so difficult to move on. We have fewer sources from which to draw our happiness. We have not activity to spur us out of misery.” Elizabeth considered her own situation and laughed. “Well! _Most_ do not. I did. I never thought I would be _grateful_ for a chance to politick, but I think I am! The worst of my grief did pass as we were working on that bill. And I was horribly unhappy just now, before you came, but I am already becoming cheerful again.” She shook her head, bemused by this. “In the worst of my grief, I never thought I would be so... near my own understanding of myself again.”

Darcy was silent, so she risked a glance over at him. He sait with his elbows balanced on his knees, studying his gloved hands. His expression was thoughtful; serious, but not sad. “You are not, I think,” said Darcy, slowly, “someone who _can_ dwell in unhappiness forever.”

“No, I do not think I was made for it. My father always said I was born in a merry hour.”

“A star danced, and under this were you born?” asked Darcy.

Elizabeth turned to him, smiling. “Why Mr. Darcy! I never thought _you_ could like a comedy. I thought you turned to Shakespeare’s more serious works.”

“Really? _Tom Jones_ descends into outright farce in the end.”

“True enough.” Elizabeth looked about the lane, feeling wistful, her grief feeling less heavy— more a fog, that might someday lift, than a weight. “I think someday, I might even be able to see a comedy! Though I think I still have two months before I can be seen at one without censure.”

“I have never understood that rule. Those grieving surely need distraction more than those with all their loved ones about them.”

“It is a mystery! But so many rules of our society are. Do you think we can escape Rosings very soon?”

“If I could leave today, I would, but I fear we must wait until after Easter.”

Elizabeth picked a last buttercup and spun the stem between her gloved palms. “An awful Lenten sacrifice.” After a moment, she said, “I shall regret nothing but leaving Mrs. Collins. I feel I have scarcely had two words sincere conversation with her.”

“Invite her to London,” suggested Darcy. “I shall ride back; there will be room in the carriage.”

Elizabeth looked at him, very surprised.

“Only take care to point out,” said Darcy, “that there is not room for Mr. Collins.”

Elizabeth burst out laughing.

 

***

 

Charlotte accepted the invitation with alacrity. Though she was very happy to have her own establishment, she was not so attached to it that she did not occasionally long to leave it. She asked Mr. Collins to spare her a fortnight “to comfort the bereaved” and as that bereaved person was Mrs. Fitzwilliam, niece by marriage to Lady Catherine de Bourgh of Rosings Park, Mr. Collins was eager to spare her.

Lady Catherine, having seen Elizabeth spend most the visit moping about all the parks and lanes of Kent in black, was hearty in her approval of this scheme. “Mrs. Collins is a sensible woman,” Lady Catherine said, when news of the invitation reached her, via a very long speech of Mr. Collins’s at their last dinner at Rosings.

“Oh yes, indeed,” Elizabeth agreed. She honestly had stopped paying attention, and was longing for either a fainting fit or the pudding. She could not tell which was more likely.

“Though I am glad you were recognized in the Commons for the feminine delicacy you displayed in being so long in deep mourning, it is time to think of other things. Half-mourning is not only eminently suitable, but a necessity. Let it not be said that you were utterly lost in your grief.”

Elizabeth smiled wanly.

“Although,” said Lady Catherine, taking this as a sign she had been heard and obeyed, “it does not surprise me that you were over-nice in your mourning. It is a common error made by women not brought up in aristocratic households. Why I recall—”

Charlotte, who was next to Elizabeth, leaned over and whispered, “I take it Lady Catherine has given you this advice before.”

Elizabeth, who had always been diplomatic about Lady Catherine in her letters to Charlotte, replied, “Oh yes, many times. One day I might take it.”

Charlotte hid a smile.

Once Lady Catherine had issued a final screed against Lady Caroline Lamb, and a number of charmingly personalized admonitions (Elizabeth was to stop grieving, Mrs. Collins to teach her fortitude, Georgiana to practice more, Kitty to stop sneezing and coughing quite so much), she surprized them all by offering an unexpected piece of advice to Mr. Darcy: “Darcy, it would really be better for you if you married.”

Darcy did not seem to believe he had heard her correctly.

“You are well past thirty,” she said.

“Two and thirty is not _well past_ ,” protested Elizabeth on his behalf. “Most men of our generation do not marry until they are about thirty, or so, Aunt Catherine. Colonel Fitzwilliam was nine-and-twenty, nearly thirty, when we were married.”

“And how old were you, Mrs. Fitzwilliam?”

“I was one and twenty, or very nearly. I turned one and twenty during our honeymoon.”

“Georgiana,” proclaimed Lady Catherine, as if revealing a very scandalous fact, “is nineteen. And your sister Catherine—” she never called Kitty “Kitty,” perhaps feeling that the name ‘Catherine’ ought never to be shortened “—is twenty. In fact, very nearly one-and-twenty!”

“Oh good Lord,” said Elizabeth, involuntarily. In her mind, Kitty and Georgiana were still seventeen and sixteen. “Are they really?” She turned to the two girls with playful censure. “I forbid you from growing up when I am not paying attention. It makes me feel old and cross.”

The two girls— or rather, _young women_ — tried not to laugh.

Lady Catherine continued on as if Elizabeth had not spoken. “I expect any day to hear that Miss Darcy of Pemberley had made the match of the season.” Georgiana looked faintly ill at this prospect. “So really, my dear nephew, there is no need for you to postpone your own domestic felicity to preserve your sister’s command of Pemberley and Darcy House. She will soon, I am sure, be mistress of a far greater establishment.”

Darcy had never considered this a reason not to marry, as far as Elizabeth was aware. Nor did he appear at all pleased with the conversation.

“You have always been so ruled by duty,” said Lady Catherine. “I know you will do what is due your station and your position in society. Pemberley is fortunately not entailed, but Georgiana’s children will have property of their own to inherit, I am sure. You ought to look to your nursery.”

“I flatter myself Pemberley will not need to pass out of my hands for many years yet.”

“Of course not! But it is never too early to consider these things. And think of the pleasure your children will give you. Anne is my constant delight.”

Anne proved this by looking more vacant than usual.

There fell a slightly awkward pause. Elizabeth was again feeling a little low that she would never have children; Charlotte thinking resignedly of her next lying-in; Georgiana and Kitty looking as if they would burst with laughter; and Mrs. Jenkinson too embarrassed to speak. Into the breach went Mr. Collins, with a paean on fatherhood that no one attended because it lasted a full ten minutes.

When this finally ended Darcy said, “I have never heard the joys of fatherhood so comprehensively listed before.”

Elizabeth nearly stuffed her napkin in her mouth, to keep from laughing, but no one else seemed to have realized Darcy was making one of his dry little jokes. (Georgiana, who might have otherwise, was too busy whispering to Kitty.)

Darcy glanced at her, smiling slightly in amusement, before saying, “I shall take all this into consideration, Aunt Catherine.”

Lady Catherine replied, much mollified, “That is all I ask.”

 

***

 

Great was everyone’s relief to come to London, and greater still to be far from Lady Catherine. It took a few days for the shadow of Rosings Park to stop blackening Darcy’s temper, however, and when Elizabeth could not distract Charlotte with parks, playhouses, and parties, Charlotte would hint at his lack of a wife as the source of his continued irritation.

Elizabeth, unsure of what she could reveal, spoke vaguely of Mr. Darcy’s early disappointments, but Charlotte could not be long fobbed off. She was too used to thinking and overthinking everything Lady Catherine had said, and, under the bad influence of Mary Crawford, mentioned it outright one afternoon.

“I find it odd that Mr. Darcy has never married,” said Charlotte, as the three older women watched Kitty and Georgiana playing horseshoes with a gaggle of carefully vetted male admirers, in the back garden of Darcy House.

“Do you?” asked Mary, turning to look at Charlotte. “I do not. His expectations are too high, and his ideals too nice.”

Elizabeth, eyes on the Christening Gown That Would Never Be Finished, said, “You two are as bad as Lady Catherine! If he was nine-and-thirty and clearly unhappy to be a bachelor still, I would wonder at it as you do, but really! He has had a sister to raise, a very large estate to run—”

“—friends to manage, and cousins to command,” said Mary.

Elizabeth looked up to scowl at Mary.

Mary raised her eyebrows. “You cannot deny he likes to order everyone’s lives for them.”

“You find it odd that he does not order his own? Perhaps he has, and has ordered it precisely as he wishes it.” Elizabeth looked down at her work and let out a cry of dismay. She had inattentively stitched the front of the gown to the back, and ruined her work for the afternoon.

“I find it odd,” said Charlotte, passing Elizabeth the sewing scissors, “because he is so wealthy a man. Surely he has the resources to find his soulmate, if he believes he must marry his match, or inducements enough for some other kind of marriage.”

“Some other kind of marriage!” exclaimed Mary. “Oh no, no, my dear Mrs. Collins. He will not marry anyone who is not his exact match. He is too much of a Fitzwilliam for that.”

Elizabeth, wishing to end the conversation, so that they could speak of something more sensible than her cousin’s lack of romantic partners, said, “I am surprised to hear the both of _you_ talking as if marriage is the only thing that can make someone happy.”

Charlotte and Mary smiled at that.

Charlotte said, “Indeed, I do not think that marriage is the only thing that can bring a person happiness, but the more I have thought about Lady Catherine’s advice, the more questions I have. And the more I wonder if she was not hinting that Mr. Darcy ought to give up trying to find his match, if he has not found him or her already, and settle for a society match.”

“Ridiculous woman,” fumed Elizabeth. “Lady Catherine knows as much about Darcy’s character as my father-in-law ever knew about _me._ Darcy would hate a society match!”

“What makes you say so?” asked Mary.

Elizabeth, incensed by Lady Catherine’s misapprehensions as much as by the ruin of an afternoon’s work, was less guarded in her responses than she ought to have been. “Because he’s met his match.” She realized what she was saying only a second after she had said it, and looked up in considerable alarm. Charlotte looked thoughtful; Mary delighted.

“I should not have spoken of that,” said Elizabeth, very vexed with herself. “Darcy is so private, he will not thank me for airing his affairs like this.”

“You cannot come out with so delightful a piece of information and not tell us the whole!” protested Mary.

“I should not have mentioned it at all,” said Elizabeth, feeling harassed, “but all I know is second-hand, and that he met his soulmate, but she is married with children. Poor Darcy is not the sort of man to get over something like that easily, and I think it still pains him to think on it— on your life Mary, you must swear you will not say anything about it.”

Mary held up her hands. “I swear that I shall not breathe a word of this to Mr. Darcy.”

“Thank you.”

“But—” said Mary, causing Elizabeth to threateningly point the sewing scissors at her.

“I just think,” said Mary, placatingly holding up her hands again, “that his reaction to disappointment is a little excessive. _I_ have been disappointed! I still managed to be very happy indeed.”

“Will I ever meet any of your partners?” Elizabeth asked, hoping to change the subject.

Mary sighed. “Oh, months, if not years from now. I have the very bad habit of going absolutely mad over girls who are not yet out— out about their inclinations, I mean. Dear me, there really ought to be different phrase for that. The look you gave me, Elizabeth! Comparing me to Colonel Brandon, weren't you? But you see I am got over my disappointment. I cannot conceive why your cousin is not. He is a man. He has more opportunities to meet people. And there is Colonel Brandon, too, to prove men are as capable of pulling themselves out of misery as women are.”

Charlotte said, much amused, “So your prescription for Mr. Darcy’s disappointment is for him to cling onto the first debutante he sees?”

“Oh God. I would not inflict him on any debutante. The way he scowls at Almack’s! I just think he would be happier if he married. And yet... I should hate for him to give up his high romantic ideals. It adds such lovely variation to his character, like a chiaroscuro painting, and almost makes me see why he is such good friends with Mrs. Fitzwilliam.”

Elizabeth dryly thanked Mary for this compliment, and added again that Darcy was best left to manage the business of his life on his own. She knew from experience how hard it was to get over the loss of someone one considered a soulmate.

“Most people are not as romantic as you, Lizzy,” said Charlotte. “And many who are grow out of it. I think very few people have all their notions of romance realized by chance springtime encounters and whirlwind courtships leading to enviably happy marriages.”

“No,” Elizabeth agreed with a sigh. “I was prodigiously lucky. I do not expect it to happen again— to me or to anyone I know. _But_ —”

Mary laughed. “But you cannot give up the hope of it? Oh _Elizabeth_. Colonel Fitzwilliam read you too many fairytales when you were seasick. They have addled your wits.”

Charlotte said, more kindly, “I have always considered it one of your more charming qualities that you wish everyone to be happy in the same manner you are made happy.”

“I will not matchmake for Mr. Darcy,” said Elizabeth, frostily.

“No one is asking you to,” said Mary. “Indeed, I am not very seriously considering it myself, since I am sure you would end up in Hertfordshire or the wilds of Derbyshire once Mrs. Darcy installs herself in this townhouse, and then I would be deprived of my two best friends in London.”

“I suppose self-interest plays a part, but really, my objection is not that I should have to shift house again, but that I cannot procure for him the match that is the star to his wand'ring barque.”

Charlotte roused herself from contemplation to say, “So even you agree, Lizzy, that Mr. Darcy would be happier married than a bachelor.”

“No, I am saying he would be happiest married to his soulmate, or the person he considers his soulmate,” Elizabeth said, “but as he cannot marry that person, he cannot be made happy through a marriage. That is not a complicated position to take!”

“No,” said Charlotte, musingly. “But I think perhaps... he might be _content_ if he was to have a companionate marriage. That is how most people achieve some level of happiness in our society.”

Elizabeth picked at her work and grumbled. Charlotte kindly took the scissors and gown from Elizabeth and not only fixed the mistake, but managed to finish the pleats that had been Elizabeth's particular torment. “Ta da.”

Elizabeth let out a cry. “How is it you finished the gown I have been laboring over for _months_ in ten minutes?”

“I am a better needlewoman,” said Charlotte, pragmatically. “By the by Lizzy, I should more appreciate your purchasing for me a new rocking chair than making me a christening gown, for the birth of your godchild.”

Elizabeth’s irritation vanished. “Oh Charlotte! Do you really mean it?”

“Of course I do,” said Charlotte, laughing. “I will be very happy to have you stand godmother to my next child, and insist upon your giving Elizabeth Collins a season in London, when she is old enough for it.”

“And if it is a boy, his first pair of colors! What say you to a commission in the regulars?”

“Not the cavalry?” Mary asked, as the cavalry was more fashionable.

“Oh no, I am an infantryman’s widow! I might be persuaded to sponsor commissions in the artillery, but the infantry hates the cavalry. I shall not be so disloyal as to send my namesake amongst men who do not know what tactics or battle plans are. Though— I cannot think of a masculine version of Elizabeth. Eli? Elijah? Please not Elliot, that will soon be Miss Bingley’s married name!”

“Perhaps you might prefer Fitzwilliam Collins? Or Richard Collins?”

Elizabeth’s eyes filled with tears; she took Charlotte’s hand and pressed it, too moved for speech.

“There, there,” said Mary, patting Elizabeth on the shoulder. “What are friends for, but to help you do what you cannot yourself?”

Charlotte said, “Though I must point out Lizzy, that if you wish for children yourself, you can easily manage it.”

“I would need a husband first!”

Mary said, “Oh, that can be got easily. They do not call London the Marriage Mart for nothing.”

“Do you want a second husband, Lizzy?” asked Charlotte.

“I—” Elizabeth was no longer deeply uncomfortable about the question, but was still uncertain. She patted Charlotte’s hand, and said, “I miss being married, but I still do not know if it is the state itself, or the husband I had that makes me say so.”

“What I have been saying about Mr. Darcy is also true for you, Lizzy,” said Charlotte. “You might marry a second time for children and companionship alone, if you wished it.”

“That is a very ordinary thing for widows to do,” said Mary. “More common even than forming liaisons with rakes.”

This annoyed Elizabeth, so she ignored Mary. “Charlotte, you got me such a good first husband, if I required a second, I would turn to you again, but I do not think even you could find me another Colonel Fitzwilliam.”

“Well no,” said Mary. “You would not find him again; you would find somebody else and be happy in a different way. The truest love letter I know was from Voltaire to Emilie du Chatelet: if I was not with you, my dear, I would no doubt be with someone else. But how nice that I have chosen you, and you have chosen me, instead of all those others.”

 

***

 

With Charlotte returned home in the Darcy coach, with a rocking chair in tow, Elizabeth decided that she had three self-assigned tasks for the rest of the season:

 

  1. To make sure Georgianna and Kitty behaved themselves;
  2. To try and spot potential matches for them; and
  3. To determine which young matron of the _ton_ had been Darcy’s match.  



 

These first two tasks were not difficult. Kitty had grown out of her wildness and was at any rate too engaged in her literary endeavors to pay much attention to men. It was such a marked change, Elizabeth really wondered if the ‘Tom’ on Kitty’s wrist referred to _Tom Jones._ Georgianna would rather eat broken glass for every meal than disappoint her brother with improper behavior, and though she had grown a little out of her shyness, she had not grown enough to be bold. Georgianna showed no particular interest in any of the young men who sought her company. She was more comfortable with the women, which caused Elizabeth to spend a couple of dinners talking about Honoria and Miss Duncan, the last letter she had from them, how happy they were, how social acceptance of unconventional soulmarks was increasing, and their circles. Georgiana caught onto this and shyly confided that her mark was a little ambiguous. It read ‘Kit.’

Elizabeth was on the verge of offering Georgiana a volume of Christopher ‘Kit’ Marlowe’s plays, thinking Georgiana might become a playwright as Kitty was determined to become a novelist, but Georgiana said, “But I really... I do not want to marry now. I do not... I do not know my own mind. I feel very confused about my mark, at times. It could be a nickname for a man or a woman, and sometimes I— I hope it is the latter.”

Though she did not quite manage to hide her surprise at this, Elizabeth was warm in her support and her approval. “That is very sensible of you, my dear, and let me assure you that no matter what Aunt Catherine says, you need not marry at all if you do not wish to! And if you married a Mr. Kit, or took on as a partner a Miss Kit, all of us would love them for your sake. If ever you wish to talk about your confusion, I am here for you. And I am more knowledgeable on these matters than you might think! Colonel Fitzwilliam’s mark read ‘Bennet,’ and he had an intimate friend of his own sex before he met me.”

Georgiana and Elizabeth often had long conversations on this subject while walking together. Georgiana had once shyly asked if this much surprised Elizabeth and, after a moment, Elizabeth confessed that though she had been a little surprised, it had made sense. Elizabeth had always wondered why old Mr. Darcy had given the guardianship of his young daughter to his son and to _Colonel Fitzwilliam_ rather than Marjorie or Lady Honoria, or literally any female relation, and now had an answer.

The third task was more difficult.

Darcy preferred the company of those with whom he was already acquainted, which theoretically helped matters, but he evinced little to no interest in any young mother amongst his friends or family. He was polite, at least, and occasionally danced with one or another of them, but he spent more time talking to Elizabeth at balls and parties than doing anything else. Elizabeth settled on the theory that Darcy’s match had moved abroad.

This seemed so likely a scenario Elizabeth was tempted to give up on figuring out Darcy’s soulmate entirely. For all she knew, Darcy could have ‘Marie Louise’ on his wrist, and was grieving the fact that his soulmate had been Napoleon Bonaparte’s second wife. One evening she was curious enough to take her evening tea into Darcy's book room, and start quizzing him about Napoleon, when he clearly would rather have been left alone to take care of his correspondence. Elizabeth did not get the answers she sought and so repeated this move, until she entirely forgot why she had begun it, and it became a habit to have tea with Darcy in his book room, before retiring to bed.

Kitty was happy to be left alone to write and Georgianna to practice; and both of them were strangely encouraging of this new habit. It came to pass that when Elizabeth did not take evening tea with Darcy, the two of them began to hint and exclaim over it, and to chivy Elizabeth into the book room like very well-dressed sheepdogs. She could not really account for it, except to think that they felt self-conscious about their chaperone attending too diligently to their artistic endeavors, or wanted to tell secrets to each other without being overheard.

“I would have hated to share my confidences within the hearing of any chaperone, when I was their age,” Elizabeth mused aloud one evening, when they had returned late from a ball, and she had thought of skipping her usual nighttime ritual. Kitty and Georgiana, a little tipsy (Elizabeth made a mental note to keep better track of how many cups of punch they each drank), had been outraged when she attempted to go up to her room, and demanded to know why she did not take her tea as usual. It would be injurious to her health to change her habits, it would offend the servants, who had the tea tray waiting, and the fire stoked in the book room, etc.

Darcy asked, “Did anything happen this evening, of which I was unaware?”

“Not that I can recall,” said Elizabeth. “I could give you a list of each of their dance partners, but you have been so forbearing this evening, I hate to do it.”

“I would bear it, if you deemed it necessary.”

“Fortunately for you, I do not.” Elizabeth mentally ran through her own activities. She had mostly talked with other young widows still too deep in mourning to dance during the sets, and  with varying Fitzwilliam friends and allies between them. Whenever the occasion presented itself, she had teased Darcy into doing something other than listening in on her conversations, or glowering in a corner. “Uhm— did you like any of your partners this evening?”

“Not particularly.”

“And I took such care to find you agreeable ones!”

“You had better save yourself the effort next time.”

“Darcy—”

“I shall enjoy dancing when you no longer refuse invitations with, ‘Mrs. Fitzwilliam reminds you she is in mourning.’”

Elizabeth shook her head. “That is a stupid alternative for hell freezing over, if you will pardon the soldierly language. It will be a year and a day in two weeks.”

“And will you be out of mourning then?”

Elizabeth did not know how to answer him.

Darcy clearly had not meant to be so brusque, or to so plunge her from good spirits into grief, and said, “I beg your pardon, I—”

“No,” said Elizabeth quickly. “It is a good question, but I... I think I will be, but I am a little ashamed of saying so. And yet, in some ways, I know I shall go on mourning forever. But you distracted me from my point, which was... it was about Georgianna and Kitty. I thought perhaps they saw you dancing with some partner or other you actually liked, and wished to talk it over.”

“That is not the case,” said Darcy.

“Ah. Well then.”

There fell a slightly uncomfortable silence.

“Has Georgiana shown you her mark?” Elizabeth asked, changing the subject.

“Yes.”

“And talked to you of—”

“She talked to Richard about it,” said Darcy. “And I knew she did, but I did not pry.”

“Richard never mentioned it to me,” said Elizabeth, feeling stupidly hurt by it.

Darcy shrugged. “He wasn’t likely to, after the way his parents reacted to the ambiguity of his mark.”

“I would have thought he could have trusted in my acceptance and support.”

“I am sure he did, but it was not his mark and it was not his secret to tell.” After a moment he asked, “Has Georgiana... does she think I in any way disapprove, or would not support her, whomever her soulmate happens to be?”

“Oh Darcy, no!” Elizabeth exclaimed, setting down her teacup and putting her hand over his. “It would never occur to her! To her, you are the kindest and best of men, the most loving of brothers. She would no more doubt in your affection than doubt— the phrase that comes to mind to doubt that the stars are fire, but _Hamlet_ seems an infelicitous choice.”  

Darcy moved his hand enough to lightly clasp her fingers in thanks, and said, a propos of nothing, “I shall be very glad to go back to Pemberley.”

“I think we all shall be,” said Elizabeth, frankly. She had tired of her own importance, and was finding it disagreeable trying to maintain the delicate network of allyship and amity Marjorie had spent years expanding. Marjorie suffered fools more gladly than Elizabeth did. Elizabeth longed for Pemberley, with all the pretty woods where no one would see her running wild, Jane in easy distance, and no one to talk politics at her.

 

***

 

For the one year anniversary of Waterloo, everyone who had not been there decided to celebrate. There were expeditions planned to the battlefield (Wellington dryly wrote Elizabeth, ‘I declined my share in these planned festivities, and am assured that I shall be there so often in effigy I will not be missed’), as well as parties, balls, and dinners. Perhaps worst were the fireworks displays. Elizabeth went to one she felt she could not get out of at Lady Metcalfe’s, as the Metcalfes were her father-in-law’s closest allies in the Lords, and had to leave before these had ended. The scent of gunpowder smoke did not affect her as badly as burnt cloth, but it did make her feel fractious and irritable. She spent the rest of the evening pacing back and forth in her pretty room at Darcy House, picking up all the letters that had poured in from concerned family and friends, and putting all of them down again. It was impossible to say whether or not she was more touched by the receipt of these, or more irritated by the necessity of somehow replying to them.

At dawn, Elizabeth ended up tossing all the letters in a drawer, and going for a long walk in the gardens. The servants were somewhat alarmed at this odd behavior, though too well-trained to address her personally about it. They instead told Mr. Darcy his cousin's widow was going mad. He stumbled out into the garden at once, unshaven, hair rumpled, and clothes hastily flung on.

“Elizabeth, are you well?” he asked, extremely anxious.

“Well enough.”

Darcy then noticed that she had put on a walking dress of severely cut black muslin and looked confused. The evening before she had ventured out in the lightest of her half-mourning, an evening gown of shimmering, pearl gray satin. “You are... quite certain you are well?”

“No,” she admitted. “A year ago today was the battle of Quatre Bras. In four hours, Richard will have been injured.”

“Ah,” said Darcy. “Shall we walk on together?”

Elizabeth nodded, and they paced the length of the gardens and back, until she was at last too tired to keep going. She slept the rest of the day. The next day she spent almost entirely at the home of the Widow Fotheringay, with a number of other veterans and widows, which did a certain amount of good, or, at least, more than anything else. She spent the anniversary of Waterloo with them as well, rather than at any of the grand dinners, or balls, but her good mood did not last longer after her departure. On the drive home, the air was thick with smoke, from fireworks and torches, and the scent of gunpowder hung in the air.

She was trembling, her eyes stinging with tears, when she entered the house. Darcy had evidently waited up for her; when she turned to look into the book room, he was sitting on the settee before the fire, looking at teapot and tea caddy with evident confusion. Elizabeth dried her eyes and walked in saying, brightly, “Cousin Darcy! What on earth are you doing to those poor tea leaves?”

“Attempting to brew them,” he said.

“When was the last time you brewed tea?”

“When I was fagging for Stornoway at Eton.”

“Oh Good God, I don’t want to know how long it has been since then! Allow me.” It soothed her to go through the ritual of it all, of preparing and pouring the tea in companionable silence. For the first time, she felt glad that Darcy being her cousin meant that they could be alone without the necessity of a chaperone or servant. It had never occurred to her to be grateful for this before; it had been at first an awkward, and then an accustomed ordering of life, like having to accept any man who asked her to dance at a ball. It simply _was_.

Elizabeth passed Darcy his tea and then tried to sip at her own, but her appetite had been bad since the anniversary of Quatre Bras.

The clock on the mantle chimed midnight.

Elizabeth set down her cup on the saucer and squeezed her eyes shut.

“Elizabeth,” said Darcy, gently. “When did you go to Hougoumont?”

“We set out a little after midnight,” said Elizabeth, her voice shaking. She felt the cup and saucer being taken out of her hands, and then Darcy put his arms about her. Her defenses had been tenuous as it was; at this shew of comfort, they collapsed utterly. She clung to him with perhaps more desperation than she had in Brussels. She had still been too shocked to feel much then, too despondent to realize how much she could rely on Darcy and be comforted by him. Darcy stroked the nape of her neck, but did not try to reassure her that things were alright, or would be fine, or were all in the past. He did not say anything, really; he merely held her, and pressed his lips to her hair when the first storm of tears had passed.

In another odd spurt of gratitude, Elizabeth was selfishly glad Darcy did not think he would marry; she was not sure she could, as of yet, give up his embraces, even chaste as they were, to any other woman. This thought confused her, and she tried to laugh it off, by pulling away, and joking, in a tear-roughened tone, “After all my training in stoicism this year, I really thought I would manage the anniversary of Waterloo better than this. I dread to think what I shall be like on the twenty-first.”

More of the same, as it turned out. She woke agitated and muddle-headed, as if coming down with a cold, and spent most of the day picking up and putting down various items of employment, wandering randomly through the garden, and worrying every kind person who came to call upon her. The only task she managed to complete was a letter to Colonel Pascal, who was in Cambrai with his regiment, and even then, it was not a very coherent missive.

Darcy was in an equally agitated mood, and Kitty and Georgiana were subdued. They had the Gardiners and their children over for dinner, which supplied conversation, if not liveliness. The children also provided a very welcome distraction; they were all wild over Boatswain, and the very youngest could ride him like a horse. Elizabeth managed to occupy herself with this until nearly nine-o-clock, at which point, she suddenly found she could not bear company and made up an excuse about leaving a book out in the garden that morning.

Though she did not think anyone believed her excuse, they all pretended they did, and allowed Elizabeth a few minutes to run wildly through the garden, until her lungs felt as if they would burst and her pulse hammered in her ears— though not loudly enough to hear the church bells ring nine-o-clock. The peals echoed, rattled about her skull like a cluster head-ache. Nine-o-clock— she had woken at nine-o-clock, burst into the sickroom to see there was no hope—

She had been leaning over, hands on her knees, and began to think she might actually be sick. Elizabeth put her left hand over her mouth. Her wedding ring pressed coldly against her lower lip. The nausea passed, leaving her feel drained and tired, as if she had just come out of a fever. 'I have made it,' she thought. 'I have made it through. The worst is over.' The grief that had weighed so heavily upon her that week began slowly to lift. 'It will get better,' she told herself. 'It ebbs and flows, you know this by now. The deluge is past. This will ebb.' 

Elizabeth did not know how long she stayed in this attitude, or remained at the far end of the garden, but it had evidently been long enough to worry her family. By the time she was in control of herself once more, faint cries of “Lizzy!” and “Cousin Elizabeth!” filled the air.

It did not surprise her that Darcy found her first. 

“Too bad _you_ did not also leave a book in the garden,” joked Elizabeth, wiping her eyes on the sleeve of her black bombazine gown. She felt a little giddy; her grief was at the lowest ebb it had been all week, if not all year. The very worst had been got over. She had survived it still intact. 

Darcy looked concerned, and, in the fading sunlight, about as haggard as she felt.

“This cannot have been an easy time for you either.”

“No,” he admitted.

“Oh come here then,” said Elizabeth, feeling irritable with tenderness for him. It felt odd to be initiating an embrace; Darcy had always held her, rather than the reverse. It was a little difficult to put her arms around him, and only by dint of finding a bench and making him sit with her on it, could she manage to put his head against her shoulder. She stroked the tousled hair from his forehead and said, quietly, “I am so glad of you, Darcy.”

 

***

 

Though Elizabeth wore black the next two days, her spirits were much better. She even managed, on the twenty-third, to put on her evening gown of black spangled muslin, which was more cheerful than anything she had worn since the fifteenth of June. Kitty popped into Elizabeth’s dressing room to say, “You know, Lizzy, I can say I have got whooping cough. There is still time to cancel this dinner.”

“Oh no,” said Elizabeth, passing a hairpin back to Mrs. Pattinson. “This is your last chance to say goodbye to your London friends, before we set off for Pemberley tomorrow. I would not take that from you.”

“I think Mr. Darcy would be happy if you did,” said Kitty. “He is very dull today.”

“He has much to occupy him,” said Elizabeth. “There is this house to shut up, and all of his usual business— and I have been so distracted this week, he has had to chaperone the two of you in my stead—”

“Hold still, ma’am,” said Mrs. Pattinson, tucking the haircomb with Elizabeth’s widow’s veil into the knot of curls at the top of her head. “There we are.”

“Must you wear that?” Kitty asked, despairingly. “It has been a year and _two_ days and you have regressed into full mourning!”

“Not _full_ ,” said Elizabeth. “I have left off my jet.”

“Oh yes, diamonds quite cancel out the black muslin.”

“It is too late to change,” said Elizabeth. “But I shall do my poor best to be merry enough that no one notices the color of my muslin.”

In this she very nearly succeeded. Elizabeth and Darcy had taken their leave of various friends that day and the day before; the dinner party was mostly comprised of Kitty and Georgiana’s friends (nearly all young ladies their age, and their brothers), and they were a merry, lively bunch. The men were scarcely ten minutes at their port before wanting to rejoin the ladies for parlor games. This was somewhat out of season, but one of Kitty’s friends argued that parlor games were perfectly timely, as summer had yet to arrive. This was very true. It was cold and damp, and very overcast, much more like February than late June. Charades went smoothly, and after Elizabeth stopped everyone from playing the Beast of Burden (where a gentleman was made to carry a young lady about the room, and to stop before each gentleman, so the gentlemen could kiss the lady), the group decided to end the evening with a long round of riddles.

After she stopped a young cavalry officer from accidentally telling the riddle “Kitty, a fair but frozen maid,” Elizabeth found it horribly boring. Kitty and Georgiana’s friends were uniformly pleasant and good-natured, but none of them were particularly intelligent. Darcy could probably have created riddles clever enough to stump her, but he was taking part as a favor to Georgiana, and pitching his sister questions she could easily smack off the green like a fives ball in cricket. There were three people left in the round they had determined to finish: Kitty, Georgiana, and Darcy. Elizabeth began to deliberately lose, by coming up with absurd justifications to entirely wrong answers.

She paid her forfeits to Kitty and Georgiana as loud, smacking kisses on the temple. It was the sort of mortification that is very pleasing to insecure young women of respectively twenty and nineteen, from an older relation they held in considerable awe. Her high spirits bolstered by the over-strong cowslip wine Georgiana and Kitty had proudly offered round, Elizabeth teased Darcy likewise in this manner, to the general hilarity of the room.

Elizabeth meant to pay her forfeit as she had with Kitty and Georgiana, but she had not taken into account just how tall Darcy was, or how disgruntled he was that she had so willfully misinterpreted his riddle. She had gone over to him and pulled sharply on his lapel, to bring his head down to hers, when he turned to her saying, “You cannot pay a forfeit for a riddle you made absolutely no effort to solve—” and Elizabeth accidentally kissed him on the corner of his mouth.

Darcy pulled back as if jolted.

The assembled guests burst into laughter.

Elizabeth looked at him in honest bewilderment but soon joined in the laughter and said, “I have offended both your reason and dignity, Mr. Darcy! A bad evening for you.”

He said, in a tight voice, “Quite the opposite, I assure you.”

The rest of the room was young enough to find it terrifically amusing the chaperones should kiss, and as it was agreed nothing else could be quite so hilarious, the party soon broke up. Elizabeth saw them off and was of two minds whether or not to go into Mr. Darcy’s book room, as she usually did. Perhaps he would not even be there; they were to set off to Derbyshire the next day after all. He might have retired to bed. But then she saw the butler solemnly bearing a silver tray with the blue and white willow-patterned china she preferred, and scolded herself for cowardice. She, who had threatened to blow up two powder wagons during the retreat from Burgos, who had marched with Wellington’s army from Spain into France, who had ridden onto the battlefield of Waterloo— she was missish about having tea with Darcy? Darcy, who had seen her muddy petticoats one of the first times she had met him, who had seen her soulmark by accident, who had witnessed Lydia’s greatest folly, and who had seen her in the first, worst throes of grief? There was nothing to be embarrassed of. She bolstered herself with the knowledge Darcy had sailed to Antwerp on her behalf, before even knowing if Waterloo had been won or lost. Such loyalty and family feeling could not be eradicated by one mis-aimed forfeit in a parlor game.

Elizabeth sailed into the vestibule in time for the butler to say, “Good evening Mrs. Fitzwilliam. I have brought your tea.”

“Thank you!”

“It is a later evening than usual,” said he, a little pointedly. Elizabeth took the hint and offered to take the tray from him. She was glad she did so; it was nice to have a shield before her as she entered the room.

Darcy was sitting at his desk, in a more informal attitude than he generally let her find him, with his elbow on his desk and his hand to his lips. Boatswain was nowhere to be seen.

“I have brought you your tea,” said Elizabeth, bending to set it in the desk.

Darcy had been lost in thought; he was startled by the sound of her voice, but recovered admirably and rose to greet her. “Elizabeth.”

“Yes?” Then, seeing he was at a loss, she folded her hands before her in an attitude of teasing contrition and said, “I paid my forfeit incorrectly, sir, and I fear I have offended you thereby. After all your kindness to me this past week, I cannot let that stand. Might I have your leave to pay it again?”

Darcy seemed almost not to hear her, but when she broke her attitude and uncertainly put a hand to the comb holding in place her widow's veil, as she tended to do when unsure of the propriety of her actions, he proved he had. Darcy strode around his desk, put a hand to her cheek and the other to her waist, and kissed her.

Elizabeth was, for half-a-second, utterly frozen with incredulity. Truly, she had meant only to kiss his temple, as she would Georgiana or any of her sisters, not to properly kiss him. But the half-second passed and she absurdly thought, ‘it would be very rude not to offer something in return,’ and began kissing him back. She was dimly aware she had accidentally pushed the comb out of her hair in her surprise, but it seemed less important to fix this than to rest her hand on his shoulder. Her other hand was stupidly hanging by her side; it seemed better to use this to grip, by Darcy’s hip, the blue superfine tails of his coat.

Darcy kissed very differently from Colonel Fitzwilliam, for which Elizabeth was profoundly grateful. If he had kissed her sweetly or teasingly, she might have wept. But he was instead holding her as tightly, as supportively as if she had been crying on his waistcoat, and kissing her with such thoroughness and passion, it was as if he believed he would never get the chance to kiss her again. 

He deepened the kiss, sliding the hand on her cheek up into her hair, causing her veil to give up entirely, and slither, defeated, down her back onto the floor. She broke away at the feel of this; Darcy pressed his lips to the corner of her mouth, her cheek, her eyelid, and rested for a moment with his hand clenched in her hair, his arm about her waist, and his cheek against her temple.

Then, with a great effort of self-will, he released her. “I am sorry,” said he, in a low, rough voice.

Elizabeth could not think why he should be. It took a moment of staring at him to realize: “Oh! My veil. That does not much signify.”

Darcy did not agree. With eyes closed and head bowed, he replied, “Mrs. Fitzwilliam, I wish you would release me.”

She realized she was still gripping his coat by the lapels and tails and forced herself to straighten out her fingers. “My apologies to your valet. I have ruined his work for the evening.”

Darcy looked at her despairingly. “I am sorry, Mrs. Fitzwilliam. I ought not to have—”

“I was not... expecting this, but it was not—” this was the wrong verb tense. This revelation startled her, but she forced herself to say, “it _is_ not unwelcome.” She looked at him, troubled, and then bent to pick up her veil.

When she rose, Darcy had once again reasserted control over himself and said, quietly, “We have an early morning tomorrow, Mrs. Fitzwilliam.”

Elizabeth felt a strong and irrational to smooth out the lines of tension about mouth and eyes with her fingertips, as she had done when she wanted to ease Colonel Fitzwilliam out of a rare mood, but she doubted Darcy would permit her to touch him again that evening. She did not understand why Darcy had kissed her, and kissed her so passionately, and did not understand _at all_ what she felt about it. She _knew_ Darcy would spend all night reproaching himself for it, however. Elizabeth tucked her comb and veil into his coat pocket and said, in an uncertain voice, “It has been over a year and a day. I was tired of wearing it. Do not reproach yourself for taking what I was already inclined to give up.”

His look was indecipherable as he bid her a quiet good night.


	15. In which Mary Crawford gives some advice

Elizabeth sank into a troubled sleep, and woke early, without feeling the slightest bit refreshed. At first she thought she might attend to some of their correspondence— it seemed like there were always letters to which she owed a reply— but when her letter to Mrs. Kirke devolved into a series of repetitions about leaving for Derbyshire that day, she gave up and leaned back in her chair, scrubbing her face with her hands.

Darcy had kissed her!

Why had he done it?

It was thoroughly inexplicable. And her own reaction to it— she had kissed him back! Why?— cast her into further agonies of confusion.

‘ _My dear Beatrice_ ,' Elizabeth wrote, feeling foolish, ‘ _you must forgive how incoherent this letter is, for yr faithful correspondent is more confused than usual this morning._ -' She paused consideringly, pen upraised and wrote, ‘ _owing, no doubt, to the cowslip wine that Boatswain ruined this past February. Kitty and G told me that they used extra brandy to make up for the loss of cowslips. I had not realized how_ _much_ _brandy they saw fit to add. Yrs ever, E. Fitzwilliam.’_

This, however, did not suit her feelings. She had suffered much worse morning heads than this head ache, which was brought on primarily by sleeplessness and emotion, not any negative repercussions from dancing attendance on Bacchus. She cast her pen aside in frustration and rang for Mrs. Pattinson.

“I forgot to return a book of music to Miss Crawford,” said Elizabeth, as this was the nearest book at hand. “What time is breakfast?”

“Nine-o-clock.” Mrs. Pattinson set down toast and chocolate on Elizabeth's writing table. “It has now gone eight-o-clock, ma’am. Shall I have the carriage brought round?”

“No— I fancy the walk, if Mr. Pattinson has no other duties at present.”

Elizabeth put on the walking dress she had meant to wear under her traveling coat, a comfortable, old round-gown of charcoal gray cambric, and to Mrs. Pattinson’s inquiry into the whereabouts of her veil, managed a relatively indifferent, “I do not mean to wear it again. I think I was clinging onto it in the absurd idea I was clinging onto Colonel Fitzwilliam thereby, but... he is gone. Nothing I wear will bring him back.”

“No, ma’am,” said Mrs. Pattinson, arranging the folds of a white fichu about Elizabeth’s neck and shoulders. “White or black cap?”

“White.”

Thus attired, Elizabeth set out. Mary always practiced her harp before breakfast, and was indeed engaged in this when the butler announced Mrs. Fitzwilliam. Mary, very plainly attired and hair undressed, pushed the harp from her shoulder, saying, “Mrs. Fitzwilliam! This is a surprise. It is so early for a morning call, and I thought you were off to Derbyshire.”

“Yes, at around ten, but I realized I hadn't returned this to you.”

Mary opened the book to see it contained music for the pianoforte, which she did not play. She raised her eyebrows, but dismissed the butler instead of saying anything else.

“Out with it,” said Mary, as Elizabeth more-or-less collapsed into an armchair.

Elizabeth, struggling to maintain her slouching, defeated attitude within the confines of busk and stays, said, “Oh, Mary! It is the most horrendous muddle and I really do not know what to make of it! We were playing parlor games last evening and I had to pay a forfeit to Mr. Darcy.”

“Well really,” scoffed Mary. “Offended by parlor games! What a man. I am sorry you have to live with him. Parlor games! As inoffensive as drinking tea!”

“Oh no,” said a Elizabeth. “That is merely the context, not the problem. I paid my forfeit, meaning to kiss his temple, but he's so wretchedly _tall,_ I did not aim properly and—” she was too embarrassed to say it outright, and pointed to the corner of her lips.

“Ah,” said Mary. “And now Mr. Darcy is flustered and outraged.”

“Probably,” said Elizabeth, “although— no. He is certainly flustered, but I—I doubt he is outraged. I went to apologize to him in private afterwards, and he— Mary, he _kissed_ me.”

“He _kissed_ you?” Mary asked, in disbelief.

Elizabeth nodded.

“ _Well_ ,” said Mary, sounding reluctantly impressed. “I really didn't think he had it in him.”

This was not at all what Elizabeth was expecting. She looked her confusion, and struggled upright in her chair. “What do you mean by that?”

Mary looked amused. “Oh dear, sweet Lizzy, you never notice when men are attracted to you! It is such touching proof of your devotion to Colonel Fitzwilliam. I only mean that Mr. Darcy has been uncomfortably attracted to you since the beginning of the season.”

“ _What_?”

“By that I mean, he is deeply uncomfortable with the fact that he is attracted to you. I noticed it after Wellington kissed you in February. For a moment, Mr. Darcy looked as if he could have gladly taken on the best soldier in Europe in a fight.”

“ _What_?”

“He hid it quickly enough, and, in your defense, you had pleasanter things to occupy you than Mr. Darcy’s sense of proprietary propriety.”

“But I—” Elizabeth shook her head. “Mary, this is— that is ridiculous. The very first time we met, Mr. Darcy said I was not tempting enough to dance with, and the day before Colonel Fitzwilliam proposed, he spent an hour detailing all the ways in which I was unsuitable for his cousin. We have become friends since then, but I cannot— it does not—”

“I am not saying that it is an attraction of long duration,” said Mary. “Just a sixmonth, or so. I imagine it disturbed him a great deal to feel attracted to someone not his soulmate, and he did his best to conceal it, especially as he would not think such an attraction proper— in general, and in the particular circumstance of your being his beloved cousin’s widow. I really thought he’d try and ignore it forever.”

“But— how— why? That is, we have become very good friends since Richard’s death, but I have not been in my best looks. Most of the time Darcy sees me, he sees me weeping.”

“Men who only like women are a mystery to me,” said Mary, with a shrug. “I really could not tell you what it is they like. Perhaps they find weeping attractive. But I will tell you a story I have really been _dying_ to pass onto you for over a week now. At Lady Metcalfe’s party, I was trapped at the supper table with Mr. Robert Ferrars— I am sure you know of him, he's your Aunt Catherine’s friend’s favorite son?— and his sister-in-law, Miss Steele. Mr. Ferrars decided he would like to rattle on about the season’s beauties before his sister-in-law. His sister-in-law talked about smart beaux in return, however, so I suppose it is a common subject with them. To return— Miss Steele exclaimed that really, it was Beau Wellington who had everyone’s attention this season, and Mr. Ferrars replied that the Duke of Wellington really did set the fashion, as Mrs. Fitzwilliam was being held up as one of the beauties of the season, for all she was a widow and only pretty, instead of a stunner— which, by the by, I disagree with most heartily. With the proper clothes, you are the equal of anyone! But to return: Miss Steele rather ingenuously said that though she didn’t consider you a beauty, Wellington did, and that was enough for society. Mr. Darcy walked by then, in a black mood. Mr. Ferrars and his sister-in-law appealed to him, to help them determine whether or not you were really beautiful, or if it was just fashionable to say so. He glared at them both and said that he had for many years considered you the handsomest woman of his acquaintance.”

Elizabeth’s astonishment was beyond speech.

“I did wonder, at first,” said Mary, “if he was exaggerating to shut up Mr. Ferrars, but I really don’t think he was. Perhaps he began to think you handsome once you had the money to dress better, and that evolved into a complicated attraction once you were no longer married, or once you had bonded through the aftermath of Waterloo. But who knows? Attraction is always so labyrinthine a drive, when you examine it closely.”

Elizabeth did not know what to say. That Darcy could think her handsome was surprising enough; that he should be _attracted_ to her— but he had kissed her, had he not? And kissed her with such passion—

“So my dear,” said Mary, “there you have it. Mr. Darcy has been struggling against an attraction to you, because he thinks you handsome. He gave into it last night, perhaps thinking you had thrown your forfeit in order to kiss him—”

“He could not have thought that,” said Elizabeth, deeply shaken. “He was so— he kissed me rather impetuously and apologized _twice_ for doing so!”

“Ah.” Mary considered this new evidence. “To think stolid _Mr. Darcy_ could be overcome by passion! That really does put one off-balance. I suppose his attraction to you is stronger than I imagined. Do _you_ like him?”

“He is my friend,” said Elizabeth, tormented, “and I do— I rely on him, I trust him, I admire him very much, but I— oh I don’t know! I have only just come out of mourning! I lost the man with whom I thought I would spend the rest of my life. I cannot yet think of spending all my life with another.”

“I am not asking you to,” said Mary, patiently. “I am only asking if you liked kissing him.”

Elizabeth blushed.

“Then kiss him again,” said Mary. “If only to settle the question for yourself. I still think if you were going to go about kissing anyone, it ought to have been Wellington. You could have gotten a ducal coronet out of it. But as it is, Darcy is a handsome man, and unattached. There is nothing exceptional in a widow kissing an unmarried gentleman— or doing considerably more—”

“Mary!”

“Really, Lizzy,” Mary replied, with a look of wounded innocence. “You needn’t form a liaison with him if you do not _want_ to. He might even be offended by the idea. I’m just saying it’s a possibility, and you oughtn’t to limit yourself.”

“So that is what you think I ought to do,” said Elizabeth, irritably. “Just— just go and kiss him again, and let the chips fall where they may!”

“Heavens, my dear, not at all. I am just pushing you towards the best of the three options I see: one, you pretend it never happened and continue on in an increasingly strained platonic relationship. Two, you acknowledge what happened and decide you were both drunk or something, and perhaps resume a battered, but intact platonic relationship. Three, you acknowledge what happened, _and_ the fact that you are attracted to each other, and enter into a... _different kind_ of relationship.”

“Mary, I _live with him!_  I am his sister’s _chaperone_!”

“That makes things quite easy. Now, listen to me a minute. I am going to give you some advice from my sillier days of sleeping with men that you do not have to take, but I insist you hear.” Mary laid out these general precepts quickly and succinctly. Elizabeth did not interrupt; she was too mortified. There wasn’t an inch of her that was not blushing.

“But,” said Mary, “that is not only putting the cart before the horse, it is putting the cart before the horse has even been taken out of the stable.  You must force a conversation about what happened before anything can be accomplished.”

“What if I want nothing to be accomplished?”

“Then you are a Tory.”

“Mary!”

“Do you _really_ want nothing to be accomplished?”

Elizabeth squirmed uncomfortably in her seat. “I... no. No. I hate to admit it, but I... his attentions were not unwelcome. And....” Her attraction to him was yet incipient, and too new to admit to with ease; she muttered something vague about how Darcy must be tormenting himself and disliking it.

“Give over, my dear, and just admit that women have their needs, too,” said Mary, smugly. “And Darcy, for all his faults, is very handsome, and seems, at least in part, to have met a need you are shy of recognizing.”

“Sometimes, Mary,” Elizabeth grumbled, “I really wonder why I am friends with you.”

“Because I am so charmingly honest? Now go, it is past nine, and did you not say you were to set out at ten?”

Elizabeth could not keep from uttering one of the soldier’s oaths she had picked up on campaign and nearly ran back home, arriving red-faced and out of breath. Georgiana and Kitty were in the middle of their breakfasts and looked rather puzzled to see Elizabeth running in so disheveled.

“Are you quite alright Lizzy?” asked Kitty.

“Miss Crawford and I had rather a serious difference of opinion just now, that is all,” said Elizabeth, grumpily.

“Oh, I am sorry,” said Georgiana, instantly. “I know she is a great friend of yours. I hope it is not too serious a quarrel.”

“Rest easy, Georgiana. It did not rise to the level of a quarrel. I merely wanted her advice on something and did not like everything she had to say in response. I am sure your brother will be thrilled to hear we had a disagreement; he dislikes Miss Crawford.” This reference had slipped out as if nothing had changed, when it was clear to Elizabeth that everything had, or was about to, and was glad her color was still so heightened from running neither girl noticed her blushes.

“Where is your brother?” asked Kitty.

Georgiana dimpled. “His valet said he was not yet up. I think he had too much of our cowslip wine!”

“How much brandy did you put in, to correct for Boatswain’s help in preparing the receipt? I confess to feeling a little out-of-sorts myself this morning, not just from the tiff with Miss Crawford.”

Georgiana and Kitty spent the rest of the morning giggling over how they had gotten their elder siblings drunk, and were terrifically amused when Darcy stumbled, bleary-eyed and glowering, out of the house and onto his horse. Elizabeth colored and said, determinedly, “Darcy, I think you have had an uneasy night. We can delay our departure if you wish—”

“No, no,” he said, looking harassed. “It was my own fault I did. I do not mean to inconvenience any of you.” He mounted his horse before she could even open her mouth to respond. Elizabeth turned to the different, but still difficult task of wrangling Boatswain into the carriage. They were not spectacularly cramped when they all climbed in, for the carriage was large and well-padded, and Boatswain was happy to serve as a footrest, but Elizabeth was still uncomfortable.

She had missed her chance to speak to Darcy before he spent the rest of the day full of regret and shame but— she thought, frustrated, what even would she have said? ‘Darcy, I am extremely confused about everything. Why don’t we kiss again? In all probability, it will not make me less confused, but— in all honesty— I would enjoy it.’

As the carriage drove on, and she held onto one of the straps, leaning her head against her upraised arm, she tried more conversational gambits. None of them pleased her. She had reached the point of, ‘Do you want to pretend that we were both too deep in our cups to be rational? We could be irrational again if you like; I admit that the idea holds some appeal for me’ when Kitty sniggered and said, “Lizzy, did we really get you drunk?”

“Three sheets to the wind,” she agreed, grumpily.

“I thought everyone drank a great deal in the army.”

“I have not been with the army in a year and three days,” she groused.

“Is there anything,” Kitty asked, “that I can do to help?”

“Kitty, my dear, you can remedy my headache in one of two ways: sit where I am, facing backwards all the way to Derbyshire, or stop talking.”

Kitty declined the first, and the second was held to be an impossible request, but Kitty and Georgianna at least talked to each other in low whispers, instead of to Elizabeth. Elizabeth tried to rest, but found herself staring vacantly out the window instead. She was not sure what she was looking for, but when Darcy rode into view it seemed almost as if she had willed his appearance. He was not a natural rider, as Colonel Fitzwilliam had been, but he had a good seat, and controlled his horse almost as well as he controlled himself. She found herself admiring the lines of back and shoulder, the capable hands, that had so recently slid into her hair—

She felt a flush rising up her neck to her cheeks and uncomfortably pulled the standing collar of her traveling coat higher. Perhaps it would be better to go back to basics, namely:

Was Mary really right? Had so dignified, so reserved, so _controlled_ a man as Mr. Darcy really been uncomfortably, profoundly attracted to her for a sixmonth? Had he really been overcome by passion? And, perhaps most embarrassingly, why had she not minded?

Elizabeth leaned her forehead against the cool, rattling glass wishing it would jostle out all the complex, confused emotions, so she might have a clear understanding of the evening previous.

She did not feel she had behaved improperly, nor did she feel ashamed. Elizabeth forced herself to revisit Mary’s advice and opinions and then somewhat grumpily admit to herself that Darcy was not the only one feeling an uncomfortable degree of attraction. He was one of the handsomest men of her acquaintance— she had long known this— but that alone could not be enough. She had not even really liked him as a person until well into her marriage to Colonel Fitzwilliam, and even after Colonel Fitzwilliam’s death, he was merely (‘not merely,’ she scoffed at herself, ‘never merely’) Cousin Darcy, on whom one could always depend, to whom she could always turn in her distress.

It was embarrassing to admit she was attracted to him because he had proved himself attracted to her, but really, she thought, disgruntled, that seemed to be the tipping point from their deep friendship to The Kiss in the Bookroom— a kiss that had really deserved the capitalization. Until he had shewn his opinion of her to have radically changed from his first impressions, until he had proved to her his respect and admiration, her own first impressions still held sway.

It seemed now absurd that Darcy had not thought her handsome enough to dance with, or beneath the dignity of her husband’s regard and affection. The insults she knew had been less a commentary on herself than Darcy’s own tendency, when brooding over an injury to someone beloved, to become overprotective to the point of officiousness. The rudeness of youth had faded, too; Darcy would never perhaps be charming, or cut out to be a diplomat, but he was capable of being polite, and tried to be so even when severely tempted to be otherwise. At the heart of it all, she mused, Darcy was a very caring person, of strong feeling and attachment, but had tremendous difficulty in expressing it. The few whom he admitted past his high, prickly walls of reserve he loved and loved devotedly.

Boatswain droolingly put his head on her knee.

“You are making the coach too warm,” she told him, but caressed his ears anyhow and thought to herself, ‘And so Mary Crawford is right. She has the unfortunate tendency to be so. Darcy is uncomfortably attracted to you and therefore kissed you; as a result, you are now you are uncomfortably attracted to him.’ She forced herself to think over the rest of Mary’s advice and opinions, and recalled that Marietta had married four times, and no less a person as he Duke of Wellington had predicted she would be remarried the next time he saw her. So what if they had kissed— many widows did more, without censure. Mary had very graphically given examples of _that._

Elizabeth settled it with herself that nothing unwanted or unwonted had occurred, and that she would be well pleased if the same wanted and wonted thing occurred again, if— and this was a dismayingly large if— Darcy would only be brought to agree with her.

But agreeing with her meant talking to her, and Darcy would not talk to her. If she knew him at all, he would spend the three day journey to Derbyshire avoiding her, at which point he would disappear into the grounds of Pemberley and only be seen at dinner. An intolerable idea. She would have to provoke him into speaking with her. Somehow.

The appeal of this plan began to fade when she realized the very real difficulties of it. When they stopped for the evening in a coaching inn, Mr. Pattinson brought the alarming news that Mr. Darcy had gone into the tap room.

“The tap room?” Elizabeth stupidly repeated.

Georgiana and Kitty were equally mystified.

“The tap room downstairs?” asked Georgiana, bewildered.

“Yes, Miss Darcy.”

“The one full of locals and farmers and merchants and all?” asked Kitty.

“Yes, Miss Bennet.”

“Full of strangers, with whom he must converse?” asked Elizabeth.

Mr. Pattinson cleared his throat. “He is not presently talking to any of them, Mrs. Fitzwilliam.”

Boatswain made a harrumphing noise that meant he wanted attention, but which all three ladies pretended was the dog entering into their feelings of incredulity.

The three ladies exchanged bemused glances, then Elizabeth said, “Mr. Pattinson, will you be so good as to inform Mr. Darcy that I refuse to make Kitty carve at dinner, and I hope he will return to us soon? We promise no repeats of last evening.”

“For we are out of cowslip wine,” said Kitty, attempting to be arch.

Darcy returned then, but he was as taciturn as he had been at the beginning of their acquaintance, and, after the plates had been cleared, announced his intention to retire early. Kitty and Georgianna found it hilarious beyond measure that they had gotten both their chaperones so drunk the aforementioned chaperones were hungover all the next day. This seemed plausible enough, so Elizabeth merely told them that was hardly something to be proud of, and retired to bed herself. She did not sleep very well, but, mulling over the events in the study, she determined that Darcy was so upset with himself because he had violated his strict notions of propriety. It stood to reason that he thought it a moral outrage for anyone to importune a woman in mourning. He had only really withdrawn when he knocked the veil out of her hair.

The next morning she made a mess of her trunks in order to attire herself in a loose, cream-colored round gown and a forest green coat, as a hopeful conversational gambit. This failed. Darcy rose before them all, and was already ahorse when the ladies had finished dressing. Elizabeth was determined not to let another evening go by with wholly unnecessary brooding and so at dinner said, brightly, “I have been reading a new translation of Voltaire’s _Letters on the English_ today. Have you ever read them, Mr. Darcy?”

Darcy looked at her for the first time in two days. Elizabeth offered him a smile which she hoped conveyed both reassurance and apology. He looked confused by it and answered her in some perplexity that he was not sure if he had read them or not.

“It is his commentary on English society and mores— perhaps a little dated, but not by much. I shall not bore the table with the first few letters about religion—” this with an amused look at Kitty, who took every opportunity to avoid Sunday services “—but I find his commentary on English manners amusing. He has a whole letter devoted to our mourning customs. Having exited that state so recently myself, I have found it diverting in the extreme.”

Darcy was beginning to grasp what she was talking around, rather than about.

“I suppose he takes the opportunity to be critical about the English conception of soulmarks,” said Kitty. “I have not met any French person who does not do so.”

“But of course! He has a good line about widows being forced to make themselves into living shrines for the departed, while forced to do so with the dullest altar cloth. I do not think I will ever stop missing Colonel Fitzwilliam, and I daresay if he was still alive, I would still be happily married to him. And yet, he is dead and I am too much a country savage to make myself into a beautiful object for society to gaze upon, in order to feel fatuously virtuous.”

Kitty said excitedly, “Oh Lizzy, that was such a roundabout way of saying you will wear color again! I was wondering at your coat this morning. It is very nice to see you in something that is not black once more.”

“Do you think you will marry again?” asked Georgiana.

This threw Elizabeth considerably; she had been hoping to reassure Darcy he had not so wholly offended propriety by kissing her, not getting into her very nebulous future plans.

“I have no idea,” said Elizabeth, simply. “I had not thought that far, but I suppose I am not opposed to it— at some far later date.”

Darcy looked quickly up at her again.

Georgiana  would not take Elizabeth’s total lack of thought on the topic as a reason to cease pursuing said topic. “I hope you will think on it a little, Lizzy. There are... I think there are men who would be very happy to hear you would be _open_ to the idea of marriage, even if you were not sure you would like to marry. I am sure whether or not you would like to be someone’s wife again would depend upon the man asking.”

“I suppose,” said Elizabeth, really unsure what to make of this information.

Darcy hastily changed the subject back to Voltaire.  

With more hope than certainty, Elizabeth had ordered tea after dinner, and she was gratified to see Darcy hesitating when Georgiana and Kitty went up to bed.

“I have felt unbalanced all day because we did not have our tea last evening,” said Elizabeth, trying to hit the right note between teasing and sincerity. “Do not make me stagger on again tomorrow.”

Darcy reluctantly took his seat and was for some minutes so imposingly silent, Elizabeth did not know how to go on.

She attempted to broach the subject with, “Please, Darcy— you have done so much for me, and you are so dear to me, I cannot bear to think I have made you unhappy.”

“I am unhappy with myself,” replied he. “Never with you.”

Elizabeth impulsively reached a hand out and laid it on his left forearm. “But why? I told you, I am no longer in mourning. And I said— I told you that it was not unwelcome! What stronger language can I use, without venturing entirely beyond propriety?”

“When you came into my book room,” said he, evenly, though she could feel the tension in his arm, under her fingertips, “what did you intend to do?”

“Give you the forfeit I had intended— the same I gave to Georgiana and Kitty.” She tightened her grip. “I hope you do not think me... fast or—”

“No, I think that I have abused your trust in me,” said Darcy.

Elizabeth released her somewhat anxious grip to pat his arm. “Oh Darcy! Whatever shall I do with you? You are so burdened with responsibilities, you see them in every relationship you have. I was surprised, I admit, but I am flattered you now think me tolerable enough not only to dance with, but to kiss.”

“You must know I have long thought you to be the handsomest woman of my acquaintance.”

“I did not,” said Elizabeth, blushing, “until Miss Crawford mentioned it yesterday morning.”

He raised his eyes to her and said, stiffly, “Mrs. Fitzwilliam, it was a gross abuse of power for me to have acted as I did. You may always make Pemberley or Darcy House your home, if you wish it, but they are legally both my properties. I am well aware that the balance of power is all on my side. If I demanded favors of you, you would feel obligated to return them, lest you find yourself without a place to live.”

“I beg you would not attribute feelings towards me that are not my own. Really, Darcy!  My jointure is not so small and my friends are not so few that if I found living with you unpleasant, I would have no other recourse. I am very capable of storming out of any and all of your homes to live with Jane, or my father, or my aunt and uncle Gardiner, or even Lady Catherine, if I found it disagreeable to remain with you. Indeed, if I found England itself intolerable with you in it, I have friends all over Europe who have been pressing me for long visits once my mourning is over.” When he opened his mouth to protest this, Elizabeth gave him a mock severe look and said, “If you say that you should not have kissed me, I warn you, I shall not be able reply in kind. I do not regret what I did.”

Darcy stared at her, utterly bewildered. “Colonel Fitzwilliam was your soulmate.”

“Probably,” she agreed, “and I loved him very much indeed, and shall always think him the best of husbands, but... I do not want to live the rest of my life unkissed.”

“I cannot look on a kiss as lightly as you do,” he replied, seeming almost more anxious than agonized.

Elizabeth looked at him uncertainly and wondered, for a moment, if Darcy had ever kissed anyone besides her— then thought, well yes, very probably, but has he ever done anything else? She pulled her filmy evening shawl over her neck and bosom, to hide the blush rising there, and thought, ‘he is not a rake; he would never take advantage of anyone within his power; he would find any illicit relationship offensive— perhaps he has not? Or if he has, it would have been in a very limited fashion.’ “Darcy, I think you are being overscrupulous. I lost a parlor game. I gave you a forfeit. It is a forfeit I would enjoy paying again. There is nothing unusual or unacceptable in that. I shall — ah!”

Darcy was a little startled by this, and from her suddenly starting out of her chair to fly to her traveling bag, and stared at her as if she had suddenly revealed herself to be Napoleon Bonaparte in disguise when she produced a much battered, much beloved travel chessboard.

“I purchased it in Oporto,” said Elizabeth, setting it on the table, and opening it. “Colonel Fitzwilliam and I used to play when it was raining too hard to do anything else— and before you protest, I used to play with Mrs. Kirke, too. We used to play for each others’ hair ribbons, but you may name your forfeit.”

“I have not the pleasure of understanding you,” said Darcy.

Elizabeth set up the board, assuming Darcy would wish to play as white, and said, “I think you are too nice in your manners. As far as I can tell, neither you nor Georgianna ever played parlor games with kissing forfeits, and I believe that did you a great deal of harm. I shall endeavor to fix it.”

Darcy said, flatly, “What.”

“You are acting very oddly about something that— that is quite normal. And you know, there is— in our situations, there is nothing so wrong in it. I am a widow, out of mourning; you are a bachelor. There is no one injured or offended—” She was growing flustered. It was hard to keep from her mind the passion with which he had kissed her only two days ago. “Darcy, I am saying I want you to become used to something so inoffensive it is a common forfeit in parlor games. There is nothing objectionable in this.”

“Nothing?”

“You need not say it _quite_ so disbelievingly,” said Elizabeth, tartly. "If you are displeased with the idea, come out and say so."

“I am not at all displeased.”

“Yes, and the flat monotone in which you said so was very convincing. White goes first.”

Darcy hesitated, and then moved a pawn seemingly at random.  

Elizabeth forced herself to talk as the game continued, nonsensical prattle that Darcy replied to confusedly if at all, but then, when she captured his rook and put him in check they both fell silent. She tried to be light and teasing but her voice came out a little tremulous, as she said, “You owe me a forfeit, sir.”

Her hand trembled as she withdrew the rook from the board; she was dreadfully afraid he would now reject her, that the tide of self-recrimination would now turn towards her, but with the same look Elizabeth mentally decided meant, ‘oh to hell with it’ Darcy put a hand on the table to balance, leaned across the chessboard and pressed his lips to hers. This was gentle, uncertain— quite the opposite of the unrestrained passion he had shown two evenings previous— and though Elizabeth thought of saying, ‘do you call that a kiss?’ she thought she might damage what little progress she had made if she had.

“There,” she said, when he sat down again, his expression unreadable. “Was that really so bad?”

To Elizabeth's confusion and delight, he blushed and cleared his throat. "There is nothing objectionable in this, as you said."

"Yes, a very common forfeit."

"Permissible even between strangers."

"Yes." She decided to try her luck. “Perhaps, if you are not tired, we might have time to play another round.”

He cleared his throat. “I believe I was... perhaps... overnice in my previous objections. That is, if you truly do not object.”

“Not at all,” she said, perhaps too hastily. “I should not have said I was embarrassed before; I will reassure you on this head however many times you need. I am so far from objecting I am in fact near entreaty. Another round, then?”

They played three.

 

***

 

The next day, after seeing Elizabeth come down to breakfast in her green coat, Darcy joined them in the coach. Elizabeth treated him with a determined, friendly affection, to prove that, despite his unvoiced worries, they could kiss without ruining everything.

Kitty and Georgianna seemed relieved that Darcy was acting more like himself again. They were cheerful, played stupid word games, and tried to teach Boatswain how to shake paws. Darcy smiled once or twice, to the astonishment of all. After dinner Darcy made vague noises about teaching Boatswain how to shake in earnest, as an excuse to remain awake; Kitty and Georgiana were faintly anxious at this, but the appearance of the tea things restored them to equanimity, and they went up the stairs trying to work out how Kitty’s heroine (an expy of Elizabeth’s friend Mrs. Kearney) could realistically escape capture by the French.

“Laudanum,” Elizabeth called at their retreating backs. “Laudanum and clever housewifery!”

Darcy had Boatswain’s paw in one hand, and a bit of the chicken leftover from dinner upraised, which Boatswain found a perplexing arrangement. Darcy looked up and said, “I think it speaks to the success of your military career that I had forgotten you had been captured by the French and managed to escape."

“Prettily phrased, Darcy! You may as well say with Caro Lamb that I am a wild, muddy sort of creature and ought to be turned loose in the countryside rather than foisted on the notice of society."

“I would never agree to anything Lady Caroline Lamb has said,” Darcy replied, flatly. Boatswain harrumphed, trying to regain his master's attention. Darcy shook his paw and then gave him the bit of chicken. “I meant a compliment. You told me once, your spirits always rise with every attempt to intimidate you.”

Another proffered morsel was met with a head cocked to the side and another high whine of confusion.

“My boldness probably did not need much encouraging,” she replied, but then, after only a moment’s hesitation, she drew out the chessboard. “Shall we play?”

“Do you care to set the forfeit?” There was something forbiddingly formal in his question.

She did not know whether this meant he had liked the forfeit she had set last time or not.

Darcy’s attention was still determinedly on Boatswain; he gave her no clues at all as to his thoughts.

She floundered and asked, “Oh... how about the lone ginger biscuit the innkeeper sent up with our tea?”

He accepted the terms with a solemnity that somewhat depressed her. Elizabeth wondered why she should regret the reestablishment of so close, so valued a friendship, and chided herself for intemperance and impropriety. Surely she ought to rejoice that things were back to normal between then?

But no, it was _apparently_ not enough to have kissed Darcy multiple times. This realization vexed her. She had secretly rather been hoping that to kiss Darcy again would have rid her of the desire, but it seemed only to have increased it. Elizabeth was constantly, painfully aware of him, wherever he was, and irritated that she must have misread the situation. If Mary Crawford _had_ been right, and Darcy _had_ been swept away by passion, surely he would not have been so forbiddingly formal when she got out the chess set a second time? Perhaps he had just been drunk and lonely and then he had gone along with her wishes a second time to try and smooth everything over and reestablish their former, platonic intimacy. He seemed happier now they were friends again; perhaps that was all he had really wanted.

Fortunately, the last day of travel was a trial on everyone’s nerves, and at the point where Elizabeth thought she would snap, she received a very disappointing note from Jane, and had an excuse to be out of temper.

The banns between Caroline Bingley and Mr. Elliot had been posted now for two weeks and Caroline insisted upon Mrs. Bingley’s assistance and constant presence— she even added a paragraph to Jane’s letter listing everything that still needed to be done before her marriage. Elizabeth, Kitty and the Darcys were of course all invited to the wedding breakfast... in two weeks time.

“There was never such fuss about my wedding,” groused Elizabeth, showing the note to Kitty.

“It is only a fortnight until we see Jane,” objected Kitty. “It is not so very bad.” Then, in rather a sulky tone, Kitty said, “I dislike Jane’s being claimed by her sister-in-law, away from her _real_ sisters, as much as you do, but you need not look quite so much as if you'd like to set something on fire.”

Elizabeth put an arm about Kitty’s shoulders and said, “I am sorry, Kitty. It is only the anniversary of Waterloo and... everything... that has me in so fractious a mood. I have wanted Jane extremely for the past week and it strikes me as profoundly unfair I must wait longer.”

“Jane always was the best of us at comforting people,” agreed Kitty. Then, hesitantly, “I am sorry, Lizzy, if I ought to have done more than I did, but Darcy seemed to know better how to help you.”

“All three of you were perfect,” said Elizabeth, kissing Kitty’s temple. “You must not fret or reproach yourself. It shall pass.”

Still, she retired to bed with a sick headache and ate dinner on a tray in her room. The next morning she tried for cheer, but Mary Crawford sent a very impertinent note (apparently written as soon as Elizabeth had left her drawing room) that just read ‘?’ and there was an end to Elizabeth's peace. She stuffed the note in her work bag and got into a rather stupid tiff with Darcy about the best method of preparing lamb for the dinner party he was holding the next day, in honor of the opening of the Lambton Poor Hospital. Darcy won this argument by virtue of having already written ahead to his chef with his proposed menu, which did not improve Elizabeth's temper. After dinner that evening, when Georgiana was playing a very long concerto, he seemed to be looking about for something; and when a servant discreetly appeared, informing him that tea was available in the library, he looked uncertainly at Elizabeth.

Feeling that she was out of charity with him for entirely stupid reasons, Elizabeth roused herself enough to say, “Good Lord, I had not known it was late enough for tea. I was off among the fairies with this piece, Georgianna.”

She went out with Darcy and, after a moment’s hesitation confessed that she was sulky and out of temper at the absence of Jane. “I really had my heart set upon seeing Mrs. Bingley again soon,” Elizabeth confessed, pouring out the tea. “I did not admit the wish during... everything in London, and I did not feel her absence too painfully then; I had you after all. And Kitty and Georgiana,” she added, hastily, handing over the cup. “But I so wanted Jane, and now I cannot bear to hide it. It is a very selfish wish, for I know how many claims she has upon her time; I know the responsibilities and duties she has; I know the realities of her life dictate that I am not of first concern, and that propriety demands my wishes go unfulfilled....”

But she was wandering away from wanting to talk to Jane to wanting something very different from Darcy. She made an impatient gesture. “In short, I am childishly vexed that the sister with whom Jane is concerned is not myself but Caroline. I was the same way when Mary was born, which is probably why Mary and I never became close as adults.”

Darcy said, dryly, “Elizabeth, no one who knows both you and Caroline Bingley would voluntarily give Caroline Bingley the preference.”

Elizabeth cracked a smile. “As it said, it is childish of me, to realize the difficulty and inconvenience of my desire and still feel put-out not to have it. My life is very good; I ought to be contented with my lot.”

Darcy looked curiously at her and seemed on the verge of several different questions. He settled on, “Would you care for a game of chess?”

“I would probably lose,” said Elizabeth, dubiously, “but if you should care for it, certainly. Would you like to name the forfeit?”

He got up from his desk and going towards the handsome chess stand with all its elaborately carved pieces, said nonchalantly, “I think it is your prerogative to name it.”

Elizabeth felt a surge of utter exasperation. Vexing man— why couldn't he have just named a kiss and put her torments at an end? It was a thoroughly unreasonable expectation but it still annoyed Elizabeth that it had not been met. Pettishly she said, “Very well, method of lamb preparation.”

She lost, which was probably for the best. Darcy’s French chef, when not given sufficient time to create his masterpieces, became despondent and wasted what time he did have lamenting to all his kitchen maids that he had once been a chef at Versailles— “ _Versailles, nom de Dieu!”_ — and had it not been for that dreadful revolution, he would not be in this horrible country of roast beef without sauce, and these English philistines who did not understand the _art_ of eating.

 

***

 

At the ceremony to open the Poor Hospital of Lambton the next day, Elizabeth had the very great pleasure of seeing Colonel Dunne once more. Colonel Dunne was the sort of friend with whom she could pick up lapsed threads of conversation, several months old, as if no time had passed at all; they had a very happy time filling each other in on all their news, and that of their mutual acquaintances. Elizabeth was roused out of any last sulks upon hearing that not only would Colonel Pascal come for a long visit in August, to set up his vinegar trials, but Captain Kearney had sold out, and was thinking of buying an estate not four miles from Lambton. To have Mrs. Kearney as a neighbor sent Elizabeth almost into a state of giddiness. She had profoundly missed all her friends from the regiment. The only better news, she thought, would be hearing that Mrs. Kirke had decided to retire to Derbyshire as well.

She became positively merry after toasting a little too much to the success of the hospital. When after dinner a cavalry officer took down Georgiana’s guitar and began playing some of the songs he’d learnt in Spain, she even allowed herself to be persuaded into demonstrating the flamenco with Colonel Dunne. It devolved rapidly into them circling each other while clapping and vaguely snapping their fingers, as neither of them had ever learnt how to _actually_ dance the flamenco, and the skirt of Elizabeth’s dark red silk gown, even with the hem of fashionable ruffles her Parisian modiste had put on it last year, was not full enough to flow in the elegant patterns actual Spanish dancers managed to achieve. (Part of the problem with her gown, Elizabeth sourly admitted to herself, was the fact that she had put on weight while in mourning, and an outfit which had once been vexingly loose, now fitted rather more tightly than it ought; she had to avoid the more dramatic steps for fear of accidentally spilling out of her bodice.)

It was the first dance Elizabeth had had since the Duchess of Richmond’s ball; this made her bubbly and distracted, even after she had settled into the library with Darcy for what was becoming their customary game of chess. When he asked what forfeit she would like, she replied, airily, “Oh, my head is too full of dancing to think seriously just now.” A little pressing and she suggested, “Let the loser surprise the victor with something pleasant.” It was the last of her clever ideas; every move she seemed to make that evening resulted in capture. Within five minutes she was futilely moving her queen about, without hope of escaping.

“Humbugged me, by God,” said Elizabeth, in what she thought was not a bad attempt at Wellington’s voice. “Darcy, did we leave His Grace’s chair in London?”

“Yes. I can send for it, but first, madam— check.” Elizabeth moved her queen again. “Check. Check... which I believe means a checkmate.”

“I wish I could swear at you,” said Elizabeth. “Very well, I submit.”

“I believe you said the forfeit was a pleasant surprise?”

“Blast, now I shall have to think of one.”

She rose and shook out the folds of her gown, attempting one of the skirt-swishes she remembered from seeing the flamenco danced, but had never been able to successfully emulate. It was on the tip of her tongue to offer a dance, but then into her head popped a question she had been avoiding: ‘Was my object in kissing him at that inn _really_ to prove a kiss would not change our friendship?’

This had been the unintentional result and Elizabeth suddenly realized, looking down at Darcy, who was smiling slightly, and looking unfairly handsome with the shirt points of his collar wilting, his cravat loosened, and his hair tumbling across his forehead, that a reestablishment of Platonic friendship had not been her object at all.

“A pleasant surprise,” she said, consideringly, and then bent quickly to kiss him.  

It seemed to surprise him as much as his kiss in the book room in London had surprised her, but he responded eagerly to her, holding lightly onto her dangling wrist to pull her closer, until she had to brace herself, with her other hand, on the arm of the chair or fall into his lap. Which, she reflected, as he kissed her with increasing passion, she would not much have minded. Darcy shifted, and before she toppled into his lap entirely, Elizabeth pulled back and said, “Pleasant enough?”

"Certainly a surprise," he replied. 

Darcy’s look was unreadable again; Elizabeth scowled at him and said, “Darcy, I wish you would be more open— I really cannot tell if you like kissing me, or only go along with it to be obliging.”

"People seldom kiss," said Darcy, "to be obliging."

Elizabeth threw up her hands. "If anyone would, it would be you!"

He looked incredulous.

"If someone kissed _me specifically_ , to be obliging," said Elizabeth, vexed, "just me, not someone hypothetical. For God's sake Darcy, you traveled to an active war zone because a letter of mine made you uneasy." 

“I beg your pardon,” he said, haltingly. “I am not... in the habit of displaying what I feel.”

“No, you astonish me,” said Elizabeth, dryly. “Darcy— answer me this at least, will you? Would it please you if I set a kiss as a forfeit again?”

He struggled with himself, and then said, “Elizabeth, few things would please me more.”

The admission sounded wrenched out of him. Elizabeth felt decidedly disgruntled that admitting the wish to kiss her was said like a confession got out by the most aggressive inquisitors under the Spanish inquisition. 

But still, it was what she had wanted, and the next evening, he seemed to play deliberately badly so that he could catch her up in his arms and kiss her with as much passion as he had done in London. 

It seemed Darcy could only offer or accept the proofs of affection Elizabeth most longed for as part of a game, removed from the ordinary seriousness of life. Elizabeth saw he took care to always, conscientiously ask what forfeit she would set, and did not dispute whatever she said. Any overtures had to come from her, a dynamic created partly from Darcy’s reserve, and of his consciousness of the power on his side; but partly because Elizabeth was happy to maintain control over something which— should it have become commonly known— would damage her far more than it would him. That was not to say they lived in any real fear of repercussions; the servants at Pemberley would no more disturb Mr. Darcy in the evening than they would have ladled soup into the laps of the dinner guests. Even if it did get out that Mr. Darcy liked to play chess of an evening with Mrs. Fitzwilliam, Elizabeth varied the forfeits she demanded enough that their games were seen as a way for Mr. Darcy to provide what little things Mrs. Fitzwilliam could not either afford on her jointure, or think proper to ask for when she was not mistress of the household— a particular tea to be served at breakfast, something for the stillroom that could not be easily got, a scrambling party up the Peaks Darcy would otherwise have refused to go on.

The greatest forfeit she demanded— at least, within the fortnight before she could see Jane— had been for Lord Byron's  _Hebrew Melodies,_ a book of poetry she had wished to purchase for about a year. Each time she saw it in a bookstore she had taken it down and sighed for it, but ultimately replaced it on the shelf; Elizabeth had spent so much on her mourning clothes, and the various supplements necessary to Kitty’s wardrobe to make it acceptable for the London season,she could not countenance spending a whole guinea on a single book.

By the time she was no longer indebted to her dressmakers, she was at Pemberley, and no bookshops or lending libraries in Lambton or any of the surrounding villages thought it right to purchase any volume by so notorious a poet as Byron. That evening's chess game was equally as difficult as that day's search had been. After having managed to hold Darcy in check for some ten minutes without having managed a definitive checkmate, she was vexed rather than triumphant when she finally achieved her object. “Oh, hateful man,” said she, kissing him nonetheless. “I should have set a forfeit for you as impossible as ending this game was for me.”

“You may do so if you wish.”

“Catch a falling star or tell me where lost years are— no, let us have done with Donne, he is quite horrible about women and their loves. Though most poets— ha, I have got it— you must find a copy of Byron’s _Hebrew Songs_!” She made very merry on the difficulties she had encountered in procuring the book, spinning it into one of the lost adventures of Don Quixote, and very nearly made him laugh; he was still in a good humor when she changed her mind and instead forced him to tell her his favorite poem instead (Shakespeare’s ‘My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun,’ which Elizabeth liked too much to laugh at.)

But when the silver ribbon she’d ordered came from London, three days later, it was accompanied by a package from her favorite bookseller’s. Elizabeth paid no mind to it, for Darcy was forever buying books, but Darcy slid it to her rather purposefully across the tea table that evening.

“It has your name on it,” said Elizabeth.

“Yes, but it is for you.”

She was too curious to refuse to open it, or make any noises about the propriety or impropriety of such an action; and, anyhow, no one would disturb so sacred a ritual as their evening tea. “I notice the string has been rather hastily retied.”

“Yes, I opened it.”

“Oh, some mistake of the bookseller’s? I left no orders with them. How odd.”

“No mistake. I am merely bad at wrapping things.”

The knots gave at last and out tumbled—

“Byron’s _Hebrew Melodies!_ ”

Darcy smiled.

Elizabeth beamed at him across the table. “Oh Darcy, really, you sent to London for it?”

“It was part of my forfeit, was it not?” Darcy asked. “I am scrupulous in my accounts.”

“It was not seriously supposed to be so,” said Elizabeth, “but I am a selfish creature and want the book— oh you rogue, the pages are cut! You have read it already.”

“The other part of my forfeit,” said Darcy, looking at her with clear affection, “was to tell you my favorite poem, was it not?”

“Yes, but I liked the one you chose! You told me early on that disguise of any sort was your abhorrence; it suited you to choose so honest a poem. Though I do wonder what Shakespeare’s mistress said when he first presented it to her. I have never seen a declaration of love more likely to give offense.” But she was delighted to find that staid Mr. Darcy’s favorite poem was one by _Lord Byron._ “Which one is it?”

Darcy opened the volume and handed it back to her.

Elizabeth read,

_“She walks in beauty like the night_

_Of cloudless climes and starry skies;_

_And all that’s best of dark and bright_

_Meet in her aspect and her eyes—”_

and then had to pause, as she blushed in confusion. She was very conscious of the fact that she was in the spangled black muslin that Georgiana referred to as her constellation gown, and that Darcy had, however subtly, had complimented her. Her first thought was, ‘oh what a bluestocking way of paying a compliment!’ but she felt so fond of him, Elizabeth really did not know what to do with herself. So she laughed and said, “I think I am trying to read too much between the lines to pay close attention to the poem itself.”

Darcy had been watching her, with his usual unreadable expression, and said, merely, “There are times, in passing over a favorite poem or novel, I fear someone reads on the page all I have brought to a text, rather than what was printed.”

“But,” said Elizabeth, catching this inference, “you do not fear it, in this case?”

Darcy regarded her steadily, smiling slightly. “I am not afraid of you, Elizabeth.”

Elizabeth looked down at the page and felt as if she was missing something. What had he brought to this text? She had been in something of a mood before coming into his study— she and Mrs. Pattinson had been trying to alter the gowns she had bought in Paris as the lack of exercise enforced by the restrictions of mourning, and the long rich dinners given at Matlock House, meant Elizabeth could not fit into most of them. She was determined to try and gain back the light, sprightly figure of which she had been rather proud, but until that was accomplished had to try and make some of her half-mourning more colorful (hence the purchase of silver ribbon), or alternate between three off-white morning gowns and two evening gowns that fitted rather tightly about the bust and stomach. Darcy’s compliment came at perhaps the most flattering time, but also the one where she was aware her own vexations were difficult to overlook.

She looked up from the book, to see Darcy looking at her with unexpected warmth. A flush began to creep up her neck; she laughed a little and said, “Darcy, my dear Darcy, if you mean to compliment me with your choice, you have too high an opinion of me. My days are unfortunately not all in goodness spent. Most of the time they are spent in pleasing myself.”

Darcy looked his question rather than ask it outright.

Elizabeth, a little tentatively, put down the book and held out her left hand to him. “ _You_ please me—perhaps more than I ought to be pleased, but I cannot bring myself to care about that. Complicated as our circumstances are, the thought serenely sweet and foremost in my mind is how much I like and trust you, and how glad I am to be able to shew you even a little affection, and have it returned.”

Darcy, with a sort of awkward gentleness, as one unaccustomed to loverlike displays, took her hand across the table. His grip was firm, almost immovable, though his gaze swept over her rapidly, almost as if he could not believe he was seeing her say these things to him.

“We may go as slowly as you like,” she replied, with a reassuring smile. “My own griefs are still recent and harder to release myself from than expected. I realize your own sense of propriety is very strong, and indeed, I do not mean to force you to act wrongly, if you think it a mortal sin to kiss someone to whom you are not engaged, but for my own part, I can see nothing wrong in this. We have been through too much together, Darcy; and I know the essential goodness of your character.”

“I wonder that you think my character good,” he said, in a low, rough voice, “when I cannot deny what I ought to.”

“I know my gown implies otherwise, but I am out of mourning, Darcy. I will repeat it as many times as you need to hear it, but—”

“It is not that,” he said, haltingly. He pressed her hand, almost involuntarily. “I have long admired you.”

February did seem several decades ago. She said, “Oh poor man— I am sorry for any pain I have caused you; it was most unconsciously done. You understand why I could not return your interest before?”

“I was painfully aware of why,” he replied, a little wryly.

“I forbid you to be ashamed _now_ , however,” said Elizabeth. “I can think of no reason why a mutual admiration should cause you pain. There is more in heaven and earth than is dreamt of in your philosophy, Mr. Darcy. Borrow some of mine, if you like, and think on the past only as its remembrance gives you pleasure.” 

She was uncertain if he would listen to her, or if she ever might kiss him outside the context of a parlor game (even one as private as they had been playing), but at the very least he played another game of chess with her and embraced her with enough enthusiasm part of the silver ribbon she had just attached to her gown became unattached. She was still a little dazed from this unexpected triumph when Mary Crawford's note came tumbling out of her workbag instead of the thimble she had been looking for.

Surely, Elizabeth thought, smiling, Mary was owed some response.

Three days later Miss Crawford received a note from Pemberley reading only, “!”


	16. In which Elizabeth puts two and two together and gets five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi all! I would just like to beg you, as a courtesy, not to ask me what took me so long, comment on the length of time between updates, or exclaim that you thought I’d lost interest or would never update, or that I'm cruel, unkind, awful, etc for not updating this sooner. I know it’s been months, but: 1) I got married, 2) I’ve been updating _a_ fic nearly every week, 3) this Elizabeth Bennet-meets-Elizabeth-Elliot scene was hell on earth to write and I was blocked on it for literal months. (I owe kittyknowsthings a great deal for helping me to get through it!) I already feel horribly guilty and frustrated about how long this has taken; bringing any more attention to it will only cause me to freeze in a guilt-anxiety spiral that will only keep me from writing the next two chapters. Apologies for having to ask this of you! And thank you so much for bearing with me so patiently!

The wedding of Mr. William Walter Elliot and Miss Caroline Bingley was as lavish as could be contrived outside of London. A small fortune had been spent on satin and lace veils, every meadow and hothouse within ten miles had been robbed of its blooms, and the wedding breakfast could have fed an entire regiment of cavalry, bipeds and quadrupeds alike. Elizabeth shook her head over it all, but only to Jane, and only as they were walking arm and arm in the garden, away from the other guests who had also arrived a day early.

“I cannot believe how she has managed to make something so simple so dreadfully complicated,” said Elizabeth, decapitating a few daffodils with her parasol. “Was there this much fuss for your wedding, Jane?”

“No,” said Jane, with a sigh, “but—”

“—but dearest Mama would have had it otherwise?”

“No,” said Jane, dimpling, “but Caroline is older than either of us were when we married; I think she had given up hope of finding her soulmate.”

“Wasted too much time on poor Darcy?” Elizabeth translated.

“Caroline wishes to celebrate a very hard-won match,” protested Jane, rather weakly.  “And her husband, you know, he did not marry his match the first time, so he is very happy.”

“Happy to spend Charles’s money?”

“Lizzy!”

“I am sorry Jane, I am being a wicked, wild creature; but I still cannot forgive Mr. Elliot for calling me a model of female delicacy and making me into a person of importance in the society. I was much happier on the fringes.”

“It is not _all_ Mr. Elliot’s fault. There is your father-in-law, who is an Earl, and your husband’s commander, who is no less a person than the Duke of Wellington— and I do not think it helped that so cautious and proper a man as Darcy chose you to chaperone Georgiana.”

“Too many men,” groused Elizabeth. “But I shall forgive Darcy for his part in it, for he hates having everyone pay attention to him, and avoids it when he can. Oh and I suppose I must forgive Wellington, for he always _hated_ it when the men cheered him. They could so easily be moved to boo the next time, he once said.”

“So you must forgive the men whom you personally like?”

“Jane Bingley,” said Elizabeth, with mock censure, “are you accusing me of disliking my father-in-law?”

“I— no!”

Elizabeth burst out laughing. “The accusation would be true!”

“It would be an unkind thing for me to say, and you give yourself too little credit. You have always behaved with proper deference to your father-in-law. And... Lord Matlock is not everything one would wish in a father.”

“Good God, Jane, that was almost an insult! My bad influence is at work once again. I dare not move in with you; before you knew what you were about, you might actually declare you _disliked_ something!”

Jane laughed and looked fondly at Elizabeth. “You are so much more yourself than you have been, since....”

“Since Richard’s death,” she said, more-or-less evenly. “Yes, I fancy I am more myself. I do not think I can be the person I was before he died. It was too great a loss not to be permanently changed by it. I think I am more cynical and serious, and less... happy in large parties, or in cities, where there is a great deal of smoke about. But as uncle Gardiner pointed out, in essentials I am much the same as I ever was. Have you heard from them yet?”

“No, I think the child is due very soon, however. Aunt Gardiner was kind enough to write she was very sorry not to see all the lace Caroline was at such pains to purchase in London.”

“I would be happy to be spared it,” said Elizabeth, dryly. “You know, Jane, the fanciest thing I had at my wedding was an honor guard of redcoats.”

“Yes, but then again, Mr. Elliot is an MP, and though the Elliots are a very good family, they are not so well established as the Fitzwilliams. There are certain... expectations, as far as I understand them. People will write about what flowers Caroline is carrying and the lace veil she is wearing to all their friends, and judge her for them. Everything will be remembered.”

“Will it? I cannot say I entirely recall what flowers I was carrying.”

“Nor can I,” admitted Jane. “I recall my dress, for I did the white work on it myself. What do you recall of your wedding?”

Elizabeth considered this, and was not unhappy to revisit the memory. It still surprised her, at times, that she could now think on past milestones with her husband without pain. “Uhm— signing the registry. It was the last time I signed anything as ‘Elizabeth Bennet.’ It felt rather odd. I was pleased with Elizabeth Bennet, as wild and misguided and over-dependent on her own judgment as she was. I didn’t know who Elizabeth Fitzwilliam might be.” She cocked her head to the side and asked, “Is that your daughter, riding on Boatswain?”

Jane sighed. “I think so.”

They made their way back to the lawn just before the terrace, where Darcy was gravely holding little Jenny’s right hand, and Jenny’s doting Papa her left, as Boatswain ambled along. Jenny gibbered to herself in excitement at such a treat.

“Oh Charles, is that really safe?” asked Jane, a little worriedly.

“We’ve got her, my love,” he protested. “And it amuses Jenny.”

“I think it amuses her father and godfather rather more,” said Elizabeth dryly.

Jane checked the little fob watch she wore on her light summer spencer and sighed. “Either way, I think I must take Jenny in. If I lay her down for the night, instead of the nursemaid,” she added, at Elizabeth’s confused look, “Jenny will go to sleep without fuss, and Caroline will not be disturbed.”

“Caroline has been complaining about Jenny?” Elizabeth asked, rather shocked.

The Bingleys struggled with themselves, and Jane eventually produced a weak, “The pressures of marriage, of so soon changing her state, of getting her trousseau ready and such— it has worn very much on Caroline’s nerves. Jenny’s fussing can sometimes irritate them yet further.”

Jane picked up her daughter and disappeared into the house as Georgiana and Kitty hastily quit it.

“Lizzy,” said Kitty, much harassed, “I really must thank you and Jane for behaving so normally before your wedding. Georgiana and I were just playing the pianoforte—”

“Mozart’s four hand sonata in D,” specified Georgiana.

“You can play Mozart’s four hand sonata in D, Kitty?” Elizabeth asked, shocked.

“Not well,” admitted Kitty, who had only begun playing the piano when she had become such fast friends with Georgiana four years ago, and practiced even less than Elizabeth did. “But Caroline came in and so pressed and _pressed_ us to continue, oh _no_ it was so lovely to have such loud music when one was overseeing the servants in the succession houses which were so close to the music room, especially when one was so busy—”

Elizabeth tried not to laugh, but did not succeed. Darcy, who had occupied himself with Boatswain, was heard to snort, though he later denied it. Bingley merely sighed.

“I am sorry,” said Bingley. “Fortunately Caroline will be married and on her way to Kellynch Hall by this time tomorrow. Then you may play as loudly or badly as you like, Jenny may cry, Louisa will be allowed to sleep in during the mornings and be in a better temper thereby, and poor Jane will perhaps pass an evening doing something other than attending Caroline.”

“It... has seemed difficult on Jane,” said Elizabeth.

“I should like to do something for Jane,” said Bingley, troubled, “but every time I ask if there is something I can do for her relief, she usually sighs and says ‘no.’”

Kitty said, pragmatically, “I see your problem, Mr. Bingley— _you_ asked Jane! She has been writing to me and Lizzy all spring about how much trouble the Luddites have been to you and how much it has wearied you, taking care of it.”

“That is true,” agreed Elizabeth. “And Jane would not dream of adding to your burdens. I fancy she is almost more worried over the idea you have noticed the strain she is under than the problems causing the strain.”

“Has she said anything to either of you of what might be done for her present relief?” asked Bingley, hopefully. “I would do anything in my power — she looks so tired all the time— but anytime I try to do something for Caroline, I seem to do the job so unsatisfactorily Jane or Louisa have to do it over. The only thing I seem to be able to do to Caroline’s standard is pay tradesmen.”

Kitty said hesitantly, “Well—”

“Yes, Kitty?” Bingley asked, encouragingly.

“Jane has been mentioning to me where we all were this time last year.” Elizabeth involuntarily twisted her wedding ring, but Kitty went onto say, “That is, she talked rather wistfully of sea-bathing and how much Jenny enjoyed the beach. And when she was very harried yesterday and I was helping... well, trying to help put Jenny down for her nap, she held up a seashell to Jenny’s ear and asked her if she could hear the sea and didn't that make her feel calm.”

Elizabeth was a little surprised Jane should so love the sea, but Elizabeth supposed that not everyone was as poor a sailor as herself, or associated long walks on the beach with the first, desperate pains of grief. Now she thought of it, the summer at Matlock had been Jane’s first holiday with her husband and child, away from her sisters-in-law. The Bingleys had spent a great deal of their time quietly keeping out of the way of everyone else— making themselves available whenever they felt they were needed, of course— but mostly doing so on the beach at the end of the Matlock estate.

Bingley brightened at the idea of action. “Do you think Jane might enjoy a holiday to the seaside?”

“Very much so,” said Elizabeth. “A little sea-bathing might restore her spirits, especially if it is done in solitude.”

Georgiana did not quite catch that this was a joke at being far from Caroline and broke in eagerly, “Oh yes, Lizzy and Kitty can come back to Pemberley with us. It will be no trouble to have them again, even for all the summer!”

Darcy said, “I do not think that was what Mrs. Fitzwilliam meant.”

“But it is a very good idea,” interrupted Kitty. “Jane has always had to look after some sister or other. I think it would do her a _world_ of good to have to think only of herself for a month or two. Oh well, you and Jenny too, I suppose.”

“A magnanimous concession,” said Elizabeth. “I had not meant to delay our own stay with you— but there is some sense to what Kitty says. And I would hope you do not think Kitty and I are ill-bred enough to come to your house to immediately demand seaside holidays. If the Darcys can do with us, we really do not mind postponing our stay.”

“Of course we can,” said Georgiana. “Their rooms have not even been shut up yet. I can write to Mrs. Reynolds today!”

Elizabeth looked to Darcy. He seemed pleased, but trying not to show it, and was fastidiously straightening the cuffs of his shirt, like a cat grooming itself to show it was uninterested in the proceedings. “Might we trouble you a little longer, Cousin Darcy?”

“It would be no trouble at all,” he said, still attempting nonchalance. “I think it a very good idea, Bingley. I had noticed a little weariness about Mrs. Bingley.”

They worked out the details to their satisfaction and began to go up to dress for dinner. Darcy hung back a little to wipe off Boatswain’s paws and Elizabeth did too, saying hesitantly, “I hope you will not think I take some amusement out of foisting my company upon you—”

“It is no trouble,” said Darcy, “and it is hardly foisting when Georgiana practically kidnapped you and your sister as soon as the opportunity presented itself.” He handed the dirty rag to a footman.

“Well, if you can do with me....”

The footman shut the parlor door behind him.

To Elizabeth’s own surprised joy, Darcy abruptly stood and kissed her.

It was a good kiss. He cupped her face in his hands as he pressed his lips to hers, as if she were something precious and delicate he feared to injure with rough handling. When he had done he looked solemnly down at her and said, stiltedly, “I cannot do without you.”

“You mean you do not want to,” teased Elizabeth, though she was amused and touched by this unexpected and awkward gallantry.

“That either.”

“Ridiculous man,” Elizabeth said, but fondly. The disappointment of not being with Jane began to evaporate like morning dew in strong sunlight. “You've had to spend every summer before this without me. That's campaign season. And before then we did not know each other.”

“But that was before our teas,” he replied.

“Before our chess games, too,” Elizabeth teased him, before laughing and brushing an informal, affectionate kiss against the side of his thumb. “Come now, we have time enough for this at Pemberley. Miss Bingley is getting married! She has only this dinner to remind all her relations of this fact." The Elliots were all dining together at the nearest inn, where most of them were staying. "We must not deny her, and be distracted from this central fact, or she will immediately come to remind us of it.”

***

For the wedding Elizabeth put on her best morning gown (unfortunately it was still a mourning gown, a turn of phrase she had liked and abused to everyone who would bear with her alliteration), of dark purple muslin embroidered with little red and gold autumn leaves. To this she added a ruched, straw-brimmed bonnet of dark purple, russet gloves and half-boots, and a red Kashmir shawl with gold medallions, a relic from Colonel Fitzwilliam’s service in India. Still, Elizabeth felt horribly underdressed when she arrived and wished she'd dug the hideous Fitzwilliam ruby set she'd inherited out of her jewel case. With the exception of a three or four couples and some bewildered neighbors, everyone was dressed as if attending a morning drawing room at St. James’s Court. Caroline Bingley was herself wearing a gown that— with the addition of hoops and a lace tippet in the place of the satin Spanish-style hat she hat put on— would not have been out of place as a presentation gown, worn before the Queen.

The church itself resembled a succession house more than a house of worship. Elizabeth felt as if she were fighting her way through the jungle as she tried to make her way in. Her shawl snagged on one of the garlands adorning the pews. She tugged. Nothing. She tugged a little harder, but became afraid she’d rip the fabric. ‘That is just what I need at Caroline Bingley’s wedding,’ thought Elizabeth, as Darcy moved obliviously forward, talking with Bingley. ‘On the bright side, if I make a scene and rip my clothes, perhaps I might no longer be considered the embodiment of British female delicacy.’

“I think you are stuck here— will you allow me to be of assistance?” came a gentle voice.

The voice belonged to pretty woman in a long blue pelisse that complimented her husband’s full dress naval uniform. (Or at least, Elizabeth assumed the distractingly good-looking naval captain standing behind was the lady’s husband; there was a sense of pride and proprietariness in the way he angled himself to the woman and observed her at work. But it very well could have been her lover, merely. Darcy looked sometimes at Elizabeth in a similar way.)

“I am much obliged to you,” said Elizabeth, as the woman removed a white kid glove and began deftly pulling the fringe loose. “I was rather tempted to just leave it so as not to impede the flow of traffic, but I should look even more ridiculously out of place without my shawl. It is a... very _fine_ wedding.”

“I understood the bride took a great deal of care over the arrangements,” the other woman said, as if trying to convince herself this was the case.

“She certainly took a great deal of interest in how much care everyone else took in the arrangements,” said Elizabeth, dryly.

Darcy was by now at the front of the church, looking around in complete bewilderment; he realized that Elizabeth was not there and made his way, salmon-like, through the flow of wedding guests. “Eliz— Cousin Elizabeth?”

“I got stuck,” Elizabeth said mournfully. The end of the shawl pulled taut and then gave; Elizabeth said, “Oh, not anymore.” She turned beamingly to the lady in the blue pelisse. “Thank you! I am very much obliged.”

“It was nothing, really; I am always glad to be of assistance where I may.” She turned to Darcy and said politely, “Mr. Darcy. Hello.”

Darcy looked deeply uncomfortable. “Miss Anne Elliot.”

“Mrs. Wentworth,” she corrected, smilingly.

“Oh, yes, of course. I see you have met my cousin, Mrs. Fitzwilliam?”

The ladies curtsied.

“I believe my husband Captain Wentworth is known to you, Mr. Darcy?” Mrs. Wentworth asked.

The two men bowed. Darcy’s discomfort shifted, not very subtly, to awkwardness— or at least, more awkwardness than usual— and he offered his arm to Elizabeth, mumbling something about needing to be seated.

Mrs. Wentworth moved to the Elliot half of the church. Her gentle air and affect of retiring kindness reminded Elizabeth a great deal of Jane. Of course, thought Elizabeth, with stout partiality, Mrs. Wentworth was not _nearly_ as beautiful as Mrs. Bingley. But then again, no one was. Even as obviously exhausted as she looked, Jane was the most beautiful woman in the church.

With one exception.

In the front row of the church, on the Elliot side, and right next to the Wentworths, sat probably the most beautiful woman Elizabeth had ever seen. She was tall and voluptuous, her features would not have been out of place on a Roman statue of Venus, and her dark hair and eyes were very arresting against her fashionably pale complexion. Elizabeth had never before seen someone who so exactly fit the current standard of beauty.

“Who is Helen of Troy over there?” Elizabeth murmured to Mr. Darcy. “Do you know?”

“Miss Elliot could hardly launch a thousand ships,” grumbled Darcy.

‘So this is Miss Elliot!’ thought Elizabeth, though she quipped, “Oh no, only six or seven hundred.”

“Oh no,” murmured Georgiana, following the line of Elizabeth’s gaze. “I forgot she would be here.” Then she reddened in uneven splotches and said hurriedly to her brother, “that is— not that I— I only met Miss Elliot once, and at a dinner at Uncle Matlock’s house. Perhaps she improves upon longer acquaintance, or she just— sometimes it is intimidating, to have Uncle Matlock staring at one as one eats—”

“Who is Miss Elliot?” Kitty asked, sliding into the pew beside Georgiana.

Darcy looked like a cat that had been caught climbing where it shouldn't.

“Oh, um, she was a favorite of my brother’s, some years ago,” said Georgiana, softly. “They were almost engaged.”

Kitty turned to look at Elizabeth, who shrugged, not sure if she should admit to knowing this. Elizabeth tried not to stare at Miss Elliot, but had to admit to a very morbid curiosity. When the ceremony dragged to its lugubrious close, Elizabeth slid out so that she and Kitty were right behind Miss Elliot. Miss Elliot, disdaining the forgiving and comfortable drapery Elizabeth preferred, wore a gown with the stiff, bell-like structure brought about by three rows of ruffles and embroidery at the hem, and long stays and a corded petticoat underneath. She moved with the smooth grace of one who had been taught by London’s best dancing masters, and paused in the aisle as if striking one of Lady Hamilton’s famous attitudes.

‘No wonder Darcy was so distressed at liking me,’ Elizabeth thought.  ‘I have nothing in common with Miss Elliot!’

When they at last escaped into the church yard, Kitty whispered, “Are you sure this is _the_ Miss Elliot?”

Elizabeth felt a pang of remorse; perhaps she had been too harsh, out of jealousy. Being now such a favorite, she could hardly be expected to be content with this proof or standards either lowered or changed utterly. “Georgiana said so, so it must be,” she murmured.

They managed to extract the Darcy siblings just before the newlywed Elliots came out.

“Mrs. Fitzwilliam, would you care to get some air?” Darcy asked. He himself had an air of polite desperation.

Elizabeth looked pointedly about the churchyard. “Darcy, you astonish me! Here I was thinking that I was getting air all this time but apparently I was asphyxiating.”

He looked pained and with a little gesture of discomfort, which Elizabeth had noticed he often made in company he found too large or too overwhelming, added, “The heat and size of the crowd does not oppress you?”

There then came a melodious, “Mr. Darcy! It has been an age!” and Miss Elliot came forward, all smiles.

Darcy froze. “Miss Elliot.”

“And dear Miss Darcy!” said Miss Elliot, oozing charm in Georgiana’s general direction, without taking her eyes from Darcy. “I remember, you were quite the budding talent on the pianoforte, when we last met. Have you at all kept up with it?”

Georgiana looked as if she had been replaced with a cunning, life-sized wax model of herself.

Kitty and Elizabeth exchanged mystified looks; for all her flaws as a mother, Mrs. Bennet had not let them grow up afraid or ever uncomfortable in company. Kitty nudged Georgiana in the side, and Georgiana stammered out several broken sentences which conveyed only her own nervousness.

“My sister is a remarkable musician,” said Darcy stiffly. “May I introduce you to my cousin, Mrs. Fitzwilliam, and her sister, Miss Bennet?”

Elizabeth and Kitty curtsied.

“So _you_ are the Widow Fitzwilliam,” said Miss Elliot, with a sort of stilted surprise, in such a way as to imply, ‘I was expecting someone better.’

The newlyweds were now passing them; Darcy hurriedly and somewhat uncharacteristically called out his compliments, and the others added theirs. Mr. Elliot greeted them all with a politician’s glib charm, adding little personalizations that felt as if he had— in imitation of Mr. Collins— written them down in advance for use whenever convenient. To Elizabeth he said, “Mrs. Fitzwilliam, my dear Mrs. Fitzwilliam— how is our friend the Duke of Wellington? I know he writes you very faithfully. I hope he enjoyed all the celebrations of his great victory at Waterloo?”

Wellington had written in his last that he had seldom enjoyed anything less, but before Elizabeth could think of a way to make this fact appropriate for the setting, Mr. Elliot spotted someone more important and went over to them, a very smug Caroline Elliot in tow.

This reminder that the Widow Fitzwilliam was a favorite of the Duke of Wellington’s had caused Miss Elliot regained her old manner, like someone not fond of cats attempting to caress one, and she linked arms with Elizabeth. “Oh but we must become acquainted,” said Miss Elliott. And so Miss Elliot made herself one of their party, as they walked the quarter mile to Mr. Bingley’s estate. Kitty walked just behind, occasionally glancing over her shoulder at the Darcy siblings, trailing behind in a fog of quiet embarrassment.

“Cousin William always speaks so very highly of you.”

“I did not deserve his tribute in the Commons, that is true enough,” Elizabeth said dryly.

“And I fancy you must have run into my cousin, the Dowager Viscountess Dalrymple, during the season?”

“I have not had that pleasure, no.”

“It would be of all things my delight to introduce you, when you are both in town,” said Miss Eliot, graciously, and launched into a long and very self-aggrandizing story about the Dowager Viscountess. Elizabeth stopped paying attention about thirty seconds into this, as she was not very interested in the lives of people who had done nothing more to earn their titles than be born. Miss Elliot passed from this to subjects even less likely to interest Elizabeth. Perhaps thinking any favorite of Wellington’s would likewise be a Tory, she aired her distress about the abolition of the slave trade— something Elizabeth had always supported— linked slave riots in Haiti to the Luddite uprisings in England, and condemned every man, woman, and child who found employment in the numerous Northern mills as radicals who ought to be shot— for there were always other men to take up the work, “just as there are always other men to be cannon fodder in the wars.”

Elizabeth was speechless. Even if she hadn’t spent the past four years living in the home of a prominent Whig politician, and befriended so many prominent Whig hostesses, such blasé condemnation would have offended her on the basis of their illogic and lack of kindness alone.

Miss Elliot did not notice this and laughed. “I heard that His Grace, the Duke of Wellington, calls the enlisted men the scum of the earth!”

“Only as a characterization of where the army takes up its recruits,” said Elizabeth, trying to keep her temper, “from gaol and the gutter— and after he said this, he did remark it really was wonderful that the common soldiers should become the fine fellows they are. We owe a great deal to our military.”

“To our officers, yes,” conceded Miss Elliot.

Elizabeth began to look around for escape, now they were nearing the house, but did not find an avenue before Miss Elliot spotted a lady with freckles, clucked over them, and offered Elizabeth unsolicited advice about her beauty regime.

“Dear Mrs. Fitzwilliam,” said she, seemingly convinced she was really doing Elizabeth a kindness,  “might I give you some advice? Gowland’s Lotion would be of invaluable use to you. It will take away the brownness of your complexion and give to it some missing brilliancy. I suppose you use nothing at present.” To Elizabeth’s protest that she made and used milk of roses, Miss Elliot made a dismissive gesture and said, “No, no, use of Gowland’s, constant use of Gowland’s, especially during the summer, is the only thing for you. My father swears by it. It has done marvelous things for my intimate friend, Mrs. Clay. Quite carried her freckles away.”

Elizabeth had always heard Gowland’s lotion removed freckles, yes, but the rest of one’s skin with it as well. “Is that not a rather painful course of treatment?”

“One cannot go too far in pursuit of what nature does not give.”

“I suppose you use it yourself?”

Miss Elliot laughed. “I take such a comment as a tribute to your belief in the efficacy of Gowland’s, but no.” She preened. “I use nothing.”

Elizabeth thought a rude word, but refrained from saying it, and contented herself with an arch, “I am sure _nothing_ could improve you, Miss Elliot.”

Miss Elliot did not realize this was an insult and preened even more, taking it as tribute to her beauty.

Thankfully they were in the house; Elizabeth made an excuse and broke from Miss Elliot. She was full up of annoyed incredulity. _This_ was the only person for whom Darcy had expressed a preference, besides herself? She could not in the least reconcile this with her current understanding of his character. How could Darcy like a Miss Elliot?

Darcy, who so delighted in debate when he had such trouble making other conversation! Darcy, who was always arguing against Elizabeth's ideas of general standards and principles, in favor of the individual and the particular! Darcy, the staunch Whig, who did what he quietly could to support his uncle’s bills! Darcy, a reading man, a thinking man, to whom habits of charity were as instinctive as breathing, to whom the good of every soul in the parish within and abutting Pemberley were of such concern he founded a poor hospital, while suffering the pangs of unrequited love! How, she asked herself, could the pain of losing the love of _Miss Elliot_ inspire him to such feats of nobility?

The only way Elizabeth could make sense of it was to think Darcy had come to his senses, been frightfully embarrassed about his preference for a woman so clearly unworthy of him, and built a poor hospital out of guilt— a sort of message to his society to say, ‘I went perhaps a little mad in my passion, but I am still the same man I was before I was so unwise as to form an attachment to a superficial and supercilious Tory.’

Kitty and Georgiana sought Elizabeth out by the bay window where she had hidden. Georgiana sat and pressed Elizabeth’s hand, in mute sympathy; Kitty, more vocal, whispered, “I do not know how you could keep your countenance, Lizzy! I only _heard_ your conversation and could not help but be offended.”

“Practice,” said Elizabeth. “My father-in-law’s endless dinners before the RAMC bill were good for _that,_  at least. Georgiana, I must confess to my astonishment, that Miss Elliot was ever a favorite of your brother’s.”

“Was it really _her_ , and not one of her sisters?” asked Kitty, hopefully. “I am told that there were three Miss Elliots originally, only now the middle one is a Mrs. Wentworth, and the youngest is a Mrs. Musgrove.”

“Unfortunately it was the eldest Miss Elliot,” said Georgiana. “Colonel Fitzwilliam took me out of school to meet her, at the behest of Lady Stornoway and my brother.”

Elizabeth struggled with herself, and managed to bite back her profound, “ _Why_?” in favor of a weak, “Miss Elliot is very beautiful I suppose.”

“That's what all the Fitzwilliams said.”

“Being one of them, I suppose I am glad I have fallen so rank and file into their response. Why did your brother...?” Elizabeth really wanted to ask, ‘why did he like Miss Elliot?’ but felt she was perhaps being too harsh and instead substituted a feeble and unconvincing, “... part ways with Miss Elliot? If you do not mind my asking, that is.”

“I do not know,” said Georgiana, slowly, “but I got the impression that my brother realized they were not soulmates. He certainly acts now as if he knows they are not and were never a match.”

“What brought that about?” asked Kitty.

“I suppose he met someone who _is_ his match,” said Georgiana, pointedly. Elizabeth was puzzled by her manner, for Georgiana was seldom direct, but supposed Georgiana meant for Kitty to drop this line of questioning.

“Come on Kitty,” said Elizabeth, spotting an overwhelmed Jane on the other side of the room. “We must go rescue Jane. She has too many people clamoring for her attention.”

Jane, trying to balance the demands made upon her by servants, fussing child, sister-in-law and guests, was beginning to show the strain. Elizabeth came up to her and said, quietly, “Give me Jenny; I shall take her out of doors until she is quiet.”

Jane hesitated; Kitty said, “Yes, and I shall go settle whatever is wrong in the kitchen. Then there will only be Caroline to worry about.”

“If you are both certain,” said Jane uncertainty, and handed over Jenny to Elizabeth. Elizabeth happily escaped into the back garden. There the nursemaids were busy with their charges, or rather, busy talking to each other and calling out half-hearted reprimands when their charges seemed likely to do something dangerous. Elizabeth nodded at them all and walked about, bouncing Jenny a little on her hip, to calm her. Being out of so noisy a room had its effect on both aunt and child, and Elizabeth and Jenny were soon restored to smiles.

Elizabeth was amused to see that the Wentworths also made their escape from the wedding breakfast, to the back garden; Mrs. Wentworth bent at once and held out her arms out for a chubby baby toddling towards her. “Come now Freddy,” said Mrs. Wentworth, encouragingly. “Do come to mummy! You can make it!”

Little Freddy was in the stage of walking where he had realized his knees were involved in bipedal motion, but he had not, as of yet, satisfactorily worked out in what capacity. He careened madly over the suspiciously level ground.

Captain Wentworth stood upright behind his wife, but kept an indulgent, but a weather eye on his son. “I think he is meant to be a sailor, Anne. Look how he corrects for a groundswell, even when there is none.”

It was a charming sight; Elizabeth felt a sudden stab of longing for children of her own. It was an impulse that had been visiting her with increasing frequency since she had put off her blacks. She attempted to avoid the usual maudlin wondering if she and Colonel Fitzwilliam would have been parents now, if he had survived Waterloo, by turning her attention to Jenny. Jenny was trying to stuff her whole fist in her mouth.

“No, no,” said Elizabeth, “no chewing on our appendages, little miss. Not at your Auntie Caroline’s wedding. Very bad _ton._ ”

Another child of perhaps four or five had latched onto Mrs. Wentworth when Elizabeth looked up again. Mrs. Wentworth said, patiently, “Walter, I am occupied with Freddy now. Let go.”

Walter refused.

Captain Wentworth deftly lifted the child off of Mrs. Wentworth’s back with a stern, “I have told you a hundred times not to do that, Walter.” He added to Mrs. Wentworth, “I should have thought two years sufficient for him to grow out of this habit.”

“Four-year-olds are not known for how well they retain their lessons,” said Mrs. Wentworth wryly.

Seeing the Wentworths with their children, something suddenly clicked for Elizabeth, like a key finding the tumblers in a lock. Four years old... four years ago was 1812, the year Darcy had seemed most depressed about his soulmate— and Darcy had mentioned meeting Miss Elliot in the spring of 1811. Surely he met the other two Elliot daughters as well, Mrs. Wentworth and Mrs. Musgrove? And Georgiana had said Darcy had ended things with Miss Elliot, because he had met someone he knew to be his soulmate....

And why had Darcy had been so markedly awkward with the Wentworths this morning?

Elizabeth took a second look at Mrs. Wentworth. Mrs. Wentworth was a very pretty woman, but the sort who would always be called elegant rather than beautiful, and her neat, light figure, her dark hair and eyes, her delicate features, the very shortness of her person had more in common with Elizabeth’s style of beauty than Miss Elliot’s.

The eldest Miss Elliot was everything that society had told men it ought to want— of course, Darcy, with his high standards and fastidious disposition, would go first for Miss Elliot... if his mark read ‘Elliot!’

Elizabeth actually gasped and pretended it was because Jenny had seized the neckline of her gown. “Jenny, no! Do not expose us _both_ to ridicule!”

She detangled Jenny’s grubby, wet first from her gown, her thoughts whirring along rapidly. _That_ was why Darcy had been so interested in Miss Elliot! He must have suspected their marks were a match. They were socially a good match— and had not Darcy’s chief objection to Elizabeth’s being Colonel Fitzwilliam’s match been her standing in society, her low connections, the impropriety of her family?

Elizabeth felt uneasy about her theory when she realized Captain Wentworth might not have any names in common with Mr. Darcy, but then thought, ‘Darcy— that could be mistaken for a French name. What better way to cover up from the embarrassment of loving the enemy than to marry a sailor at war with the French? Sir Walter seems the sort to insist his daughter marry to cover up such a social embarrassment.’ She had come across Sir Walter Elliot many times during the various London seasons, and was less impressed with every meeting. ‘And the Navy, even more than the Army, has a reputation for being full of men who had unacceptable or unusual soulmarks, men who might not be able to be with their soulmates— and thus a naval officer, especially one as handsome as Captain Wentworth, might marry a baronet’s daughter. He might offer for a lady not because their makers match but just because he liked her— which he clearly does—’

‘But the Wentworths clearly _love_ each other,’ part of her corrected.

‘You can love someone not your soulmate,’ Elizabeth thought. 'Love is a choice; and if they clearly chose each other, then they love with more than usual clarity and purity.' But she was not yet ready to accept all the inferences of this realization and turned her attention back to Mrs. Wentworth. Perhaps Mrs. Wentworth had been with child in 1811, and that was why she would not leave her husband for Darcy, her true soulmate? Or perhaps, seeing Darcy pursue her sister, she had decided Darcy was not her soulmate and ceased to wonder about the mark on his wrist? After all, Elizabeth herself had been confused and a little shaken in her understanding of Darcy's regard for her, just from seeing Miss Elliot. Elizabeth somehow doubted Mrs. Wentworth had much in common with Miss Elliot either; in a similar situation, say, if Colonel Fitzwilliam had first pursued Jane or Kitty, Elizabeth might not have entertained the possibility that she and Colonel Fitzwilliam could be a match.

If Mrs. Wentworth _was_ the married woman with children over whom Darcy had been making himself miserable for years, the sheer scope of Wickham’s awful behavior to Darcy was staggering in its cruelty. If Darcy had met the Elliot sisters in the spring of 1811, and ended the season in town aware that he had been pursuing the wrong sister— that, in fact, the correct Miss Elliot was a Miss Elliot no longer, and would not leave her husband for him — then Darcy had been catapulted from one devastating personal tragedy to another. Wickham had tried to elope with Georgiana in the summer of 1811. Perhaps Wickham, who had seen Darcy’s mark when it came in, had even then still been a friend— or if not, perhaps he had heard Darcy had been pursuing the eldest of three Miss Elliots and had not married her, and put two and two together. It struck Elizabeth that Wickham might even have decided to elope with Georgiana specifically that summer in the hopes Darcy would be too distracted by his own disappointments to be very attentive to his sister.

“Oh poor Darcy,” Elizabeth could not help but murmur.

Jane came out then, looking as if she had managed to break through her exhaustion, to a second burst of energy. This was due, Elizabeth learnt, through Jane’s rather garbled exclamations of joy and gratitude, to Mr. Bingley’s informing her that they would be going away on a holiday, just the two of them, and Jenny.

“You do not mind, having to go back to Pemberley?” Jane asked anxiously, searching Elizabeth’s face. “If you did mind—”

“I do not at all; indeed I am a little glad of it!” Elizabeth exclaimed and then, with a glance at the Wentworths, still playing with their children, she drew Jane a away into the flowerbeds and filled her in on her suspicions.

“Oh poor Mr. Darcy!” whispered Jane, eyes filling with tears. “In that case, I am very glad you are to go back with him, you and Kitty— it must be so difficult for him now, and he will need his friends about him— and with Bingley gone—”

“Jane,” said Elizabeth, pressing her hands (Jenny was wreaking havoc amongst the larkspur), “do not for a moment feel any guilt! I am sure Bingley would do all he could to help, but he met his soulmate and married her— he cannot understand the very particular pain of having met your soulmate— or someone you think your soulmate— and thereafter finding it impossible to be with them. I do not mean to make this out to be an unusual circumstance, but it _is_ one I have just struggled through. I really think I can be of help. Seeing the Wentworths today must not have been easy on him.”

“Oh and they are dining here tonight, and leaving tomorrow, with the rest of the Elliot party,” exclaimed Jane. “I had no notion— that is, he told Charles and Charles told me the general situation but I knew none of the particulars—”

“I do not think Darcy would want them to be generally known,” said Elizabeth, thinking through this. “The Wentworths seem very happy and are respectable. And in ‘11 we were still at war, and I think it very likely Captain Wentworth was in active service. How could a man like Darcy, to whom duty and kindness to others is so instinctive, bring any shadow of discredit or misery to them, especially in so trying a time? No, he would hide what he felt.”

Jane was made so sad by this, Elizabeth expected Jane had finally been pushed past her limits and, when laying down Jenny for a nap, insisted Jane take one as well. As a result, at dinner the Bingley ladies were all absent. No one had the heart to rouse Jane; Mrs. Hurst had retired in a state of semi-hysterical exhaustion; and Mr. and Mrs. Elliot had decided to begin their wedding journey soon after the breakfast, and stay at an inn for their first evening, as man and wife. Elizabeth, as widow of the younger son of an Earl, was therefore one of the highest ranking ladies present, and had the misfortune of being led in by Sir Walter Elliot. It was an awful trial, but at least confirmed her theory; when she asked about the marriage of his daughters, Sir Walter deigned to comment on his sons-in-law as such: “Captain Wentworth is a very fine-looking man, despite his profession. More air than one generally sees, though it is a pity about his complexion.” He meditated on this and added, “Though he is a great deal better than Mr. Musgrove, to be sure. I had my reservations about marrying Anne, do not think I did not— but his sister is married to my tenant— I should say, my former tenant, Admiral Croft— and though the honor is all on their side, at being linked to our family, I am not so illiberal as to disdain the connection. Captain Wentworth saw good service in the wars and made a great deal of money. He keeps Anne in very tolerable comfort.”

This aligned pretty well with what Elizabeth had thought, and Sir Walter’s neatly disposing of the French by speaking of the various horrors of French fashion only added to her sense of certainty. Sir Walter would make his daughter marry, as many fathers of English high society would, to prove that their child's mark was perfectly normal, perfectly acceptable, etc.

A little later Sir Walter also confirmed, “Ah yes, your cousin Mr. Darcy made our acquaintance in the spring of ‘11. Now _there_ is a handsome gentleman. Such air and elegance! I would be pleased to be seen with him anywhere. He and my eldest, Elizabeth, made such a fine couple when they stood up together, but the Fitzwilliams did not approve.” He added, unctuously, “Not to speak against your relations, Mrs. Fitzwilliams— never that! But your father-in-law is so Whiggish in his notions. It really is too much of him, to expect every woman to interest herself in politics as he does. I daresay he would disapprove of any connection his nephew sought to make, if Mrs. Darcy was not standing on her dignity about sugar and wearing those dreadful abolitionist cameos reading ‘am I not a man and a brother.’”

“Politics is my father-in-law’s particular passion,” said Elizabeth, deciding not to get into a fight about abolition. She personally put up quite a lot of fuss about buying sugar from plantations owned and worked on by free men, and she had one of those cameos, which raised money for freed slaves, and urged those who saw it to recall slaves were people and not property. “Were your other daughters in London at that time?”

“Mary was in Uppercross, and I fancy Anne was with her for a time— but no, Lady Russell brought Anne up to town with her, later in the season. Anne was there by Easter, I think.”

Elizabeth worked out the timeline on a scrap of paper in her workbasket, when the ladies left the gentlemen to their port. This seemed to work out and— barring some great misperception, or blind spot— Elizabeth could not think of any other explanation for all she had not understood about Darcy.

With this sensation of perfect understanding came a sense of overwhelming affection and tenderness for Darcy. When the gentlemen rejoined them, Elizabeth cheerfully and unashamedly monopolized him. Darcy was rather surprised at her high spirits, and ventured to say he thought she’d be out of humor, “for, in all the time I have known you, I have never yet see you bear unnecessary formality and ceremony with anything like cheerfulness.”

She laughed. “A flattering portrait of me, Darcy. Perhaps I am merely happy it is all over?” Then, before she could think to stop herself, “And perhaps, Darcy, I am happy to go back with you to Pemberley?”

His look of surprised delight warmed her. Impulsively, she added, “Also, I want to apologize.”

“For what?” he asked.

“For how I treated you when we first met and after meeting again in Kent. I fear I did not understand you at all then.”

“And do you now?”

“I think so. I did not realize just quite how much you were suffering, how hard a time you have had—”

“I wish you would not make me out to be quite so pathetic,” said Darcy, a little sourly. “I have been unhappy, yes, but I have also been happy, and I have accomplished things of which I am extremely proud. The hospital is at last completed, and Colonel Pascal arriving in two weeks; and I daresay these vinegar trials of his might be our generation’s great discovery— something akin to the smallpox inoculation. A man cannot help but be pleased to be part of such an endeavor. And there is no such thing as a life of naught but passion and suffering, any more than there is a continuous earthquake. That is something Lord Byron himself told me; even the Romantic of our era does not paint the life of a man a little disappointed in love, so blackly as all that.”

Elizabeth dropped her work. “You never told me you met Lord Byron!”

This story, of possibly the worst house party Darcy had ever had the displeasure to attend, lasted the rest of the evening. Elizabeth was pleased she had kept him from any further misery in the company of any Elliot.

To Elizabeth’s surprise, Darcy rather flourished under the additional care she lavished upon him, when they returned to Pemberly; as she tried to communicate, without directly speaking of it, that even if he thought little of his past suffering, she was sorry he should have experienced it. She was not sure how much _he_ understood, but Darcy seemed to comprehend that all the new little gestures and overtures she made were important not in and of themselves, but because of the love that inspired them. Or affection, rather, Elizabeth hastily thought to herself. But this idea, once touched upon, could not be ignored.

Elizabeth frequently, uncertainly probed at the nature of her affection for Darcy, as a child might with a loose tooth, testing her own tolerance for pain, and her own unthinking, involuntary resistance. Though she was perfectly fine— now, at least, after her initial confused panic had been got over— with the idea of being attracted to someone not her husband, she struggled, still, to think she might fall in love with someone else. And perhaps then....

But this was still too far. And yet—

Elizabeth could not help but notice every quality about Darcy she liked most had become more endearing now she understood more exactly the nature of his struggles. How good he was, how noble, how much responsibility he took on, how seriously he took his duties even in the face of personal tragedies.

She continued to feel ashamed of her own first impressions. Of course Darcy was going to be disagreeable and easily displeased when he first arrived in Hertfordshire! He had endured more than most men that spring and summer. Of course he would have panicked at the idea of someone so beloved as his cousin Richard marrying after only a month-long acquaintance, after both Darcy _and_ Georgiana had been so mistaken about their matches! And how much more impressive was Darcy’s subsequent change of heart towards her, knowing all this?

There were times, when she thought of this, or tried to chivvy herself on, where she felt an almost painful tenderness for Darcy, but by and large, her growing affection filled her with a sense of elated wonder. Sometimes when she looked up from her work in the evenings, to see Darcy sitting beside her with a book or newspaper, she would be filled with a sensation of giddy astonishment— that they were so easy with each other after so fraught a relationship and such initial mistaken understandings of each other, yes, but also that so little a thing as sitting on the same couch of an evening could make her feel so contented.

Then, about the time Elizabeth began to wonder if it would be possible for such happy co-existence to go on even longer than the Bingleys’ holiday, Lady Catherine came for an unexpected visit.


	17. In which Colonel Pascal and Lady Catherine correct Elizabeth's arithmetic

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Darcyshaming kindly made some fanart of The Kiss In the Bookroom a couple of chapters ago: http://darcyshaming.tumblr.com/post/163500874224/his-defenses-began-to-crumble-thoughts-tumbled
> 
> :D Thanks Darcyshaming!

Elizabeth returned from her usual weekly visit to the hospital in a state of considerable perplexity.

“Georgiana,” she called, spotting her in the front hallway, “I do not mean to interfere but did you need any help for this ball you are planning? I think in the excitement of Mrs. Elliot’s wedding, and coming back to Pemberley, I forgot your telling me of it.”

“A ball?” Georgiana asked blankly.

“Yes, Colonel Dunne asked me to save him the Irish reel—he was feeling nationalistic— and I am afraid I stared at him in utter confusion.”

“I am not planning a ball.”

“Was it supposed to be a surprise?”

Intentionally or not, it was a surprise to Georgiana.

Elizabeth hesitated and said, “You did not... perhaps forget that you had mentioned wanting to plan a ball to an over efficient servant?”

“No,” said Georgiana, considerably bewildered.

The footmen in the front hall replied with bewilderment to Elizabeth’s inquiries on that head. Mrs. Reynolds was sent for, and she was aghast at the idea she would _ever_ issue invitations herself. Then she paused and said, “Although, madam— Lady Catherine is come. She is in the library with the master now.”

“Lady Catherine is come!” Elizabeth and Georgiana both exclaimed.

“Yes, Mrs. Fitzwilliam, and Miss de Bourgh and her companion too. I have put them in the blue and the yellow guest rooms, as they were the ones most recently cleaned. We are preparing the best guest bedroom for Lady Catherine. Colonel Pascal will not mind he will not be in it?”

“No, he has experienced Lady Catherine himself enough times at Matlock House to understand— but why is Lady Catherine here? I had no notion of her coming, and I do not think Mr. Darcy would spring guests upon us unannounced— it does play merry hell with the dinners Georgiana and I have ordered this week. Could you lay thrrr more places at table, and let me know if Monsieur Bayard is utterly or merely dreadfully upset at having three additional guests for dinner this close to the dressing hour?”

“I shall talk to Monsieur Bayard, ma’am, but permit me to say that it seemed the master was also very surprised to see Lady Catherine.”

“Shall we stage a rescue, Georgiana?” Elizabeth asked, when all the servants had gone downstairs. “If we combine forces, we may yet rout the invader.” The ribbon about her wrist had been a little deranged as she took off her fawn-colored spencer, and she pulled it straight with the same air as an army officer adjusting his gloves before battle.

“Must I?” asked Georgiana, gesturing at her dusty riding habit covered in horsehair and sweat.

Elizabeth laughed. “No, you needn’t. Go up and wash. I will make your excuses if Lady Catherine asks.” She rapped on the door. “Mr. Darcy? It is Mrs. Fitzwilliam.”

The sound of hasty footsteps soon followed, and the door swung open.

“Mrs. Fitzwilliam,” said Darcy, with patent relief. “Will you please come in?”

Elizabeth did so, and went so far as to add, “Lady Catherine! This is _such_ a surprise! We had no notion of your coming to Pemberley.”

Lady Catherine, regally enthroned in the Duke of Wellington’s wingback chair before the fire, her hands resting on the ivory top of her beribboned walking stick, looked suspiciously at Elizabeth. “I flatter myself that I carried off the surprise perfectly. Not a soul knew of my plan to visit my dear nephew on his birthday. Were you not surprised, Darcy?”

“Extremely,” replied he, seating himself behind his desk.

Lady Catherine said, “ _I_ am surprised, Mrs. Fitzwilliam, you are still at Pemberley. I was given to understand that you would be spending the rest of the summer with your sister, Mrs. Bingley.”

“I will, when she and her husband return from Sanditon,” said Elizabeth, smilingly, and sitting in her usual chair, by the chessboard. “But that is not for another month or two.”

Lady Catherine was extremely displeased to hear this. Only rearranging the fall of her gold-trimmed purple brocade traveling gown restored her to equanimity. “If you had known that you were staying on longer at Pemberley, I wonder then, why _you_ did not organize a ball for my nephew’s birthday.”

“For _Mr. Darcy’s_ birthday?”

Darcy looked as if he could conceive of no birthday present more horrible than a ball in his honor.

Lady Catherine of course ignored this. “Indeed, yes. The master of Pemberley ought to have some celebration of his birth. But I suppose you are still in half-mourning—” with an approving nod to Elizabeth’s lavender walking gown (she had not yet lost enough weight to fit into any of her walking gowns from Paris) “—so you did not think it proper to plan a ball.” Lady Catherine was inclined to be pleased with this news. “That is very proper in you; I well understand your scruples. However, I am not in mourning and tomorrow week shall be a full moon. We shall have a ball then. A local affair, nothing too grand. It is all that can be done in so short a span of time.”

Darcy was speechless.

“Your Ladyship is much too kind,” Elizabeth began to protest.

“You need not do anything,” Lady Catherine assured her. “I have already sent the invitations; indeed, all the neighbors ought to have received them today. My own chef has brought everything necessary for the white soup. I daresay he is in the kitchen, making it already. We shall need access to your succession houses before we can plan the rest of the menu, but I assured them that would be arranged tomorrow.”

Elizabeth and Darcy exchanged dumbstruck looks.

“Monsieur Bayard knows someone else will be cooking in his kitchen?” Elizabeth managed.

“Who?”

“Mr. Darcy’s chef. Monsieur Bayard.”

Lady Catherine waved away this detail. “Now, I will go wash and dress for dinner. I will tell you of all the plans I made in your behalf then.” She rose, managing to imbue the act with more ceremony than Louis XIV at Versailles, admonished Darcy to think on what she had told him, and swept out of the room.

“Well!” exclaimed Elizabeth, when the door swung shut. “I wish Lady Catherine had been given a pair of colors. We would have been across the Pyrenees without Napoleon’s knowing of it back in ‘09. She is thorough  master of the surprise attack. I suppose she has brought you a hugely inconvenient birthday present?”

“Of a kind.”

“That sounds ominous. Dare I ask...?”

“As I am now thirty-three and have not found a wife, Lady Catherine has found one for me.”

Elizabeth felt unpleasantly jolted. “In— indeed? Is it anyone I know?”

“She suggested I ought to marry Anne.”

“Your cousin Anne?” asked Elizabeth.

“Yes.”

Then understanding dawned. ‘Ah!’ thought Elizabeth, ‘Lady Catherine has reached the same conclusion I have— but she is not so clever as she thinks! She picked up that Darcy’s soulmate was Anne Elliot Wentworth, but she did not correctly guess his mark!’ “That is... kind of her, I suppose, but I thought....” She absently picked up one of the chess pieces and turned it over in her hand, before flushing at the half-smile Darcy gave her in response and hastily setting it back down. “That is— the two of you have known each other your whole lives. Surely if you were a match, you would have known by now.”

“We are not a match.”

“Then...?”

“As I am fast approaching death,” replied Darcy, dryly, “clearly all that is left to me is the very common society arrangement whereby I marry someone my social equal and pretend we are a match, for the purpose of keeping both Rosings and Pemberley in the family, and having children.”

“ _Anne_ have children?” Elizabeth said, in some alarm.

“Yes, that seemed... inadvisable.”

“That is to say,” Elizabeth backtracked, feeling her shock had been a bit excessive, “I suppose it is not... impossible, but she is in such poor health I cannot think how she could be comfortable carrying a child to term. And....” She hesitated. “I do not mean to project my own wishes on you Darcy, but I always thought you would wish for at least three children, at the very least.”

He looked at her with a soft, amused expression, the sunlight behind him fading into the tumbled strands of his dark hair. Unless his valet was particularly attentive in the morning, there was a single lock of hair that tended to fall out of order and over his forehead; it had done so now and Darcy looked unfairly charming because of it. “I suppose you think me rather traditional then.”

“An heir, a spare, and a little girl to keep her mother company,” said Elizabeth flippantly. She stood and stretched. “But no, that was not my reasoning. I chose three because it has for some years been my own preference, and because is more than two and less than five. Five children, in my experience, is an unmanageable amount; and from what you and Georgiana have let fall, I think you would have wished for more children your own age about you, when growing up— with the Fitzwilliams at the other end of the country, and so few members of your father’s family in general.”

“That is true,” he said, “but Pemberley is not entailed; and I would find it no evil to have a large family of girls.”

She walked over to Darcy and affectionately flicked the lock of hair off of his forehead. “So you think, but as one who grew up in a large family of girls, let me assure you, you would change your mind as soon as they all have language enough to argue with each other.”

Her fingers lingered in his hair; it was thick and nicely textured, with enough natural curl to be fashionable without being unmanageable. And Darcy was smiling up at her in a way that meant he was amused by her, and searching for the right way to match her tone and spirits; her heart swelled with sudden affection.

“Mrs. Fitzwilliam,” said Lady Catherine grandly, from the doorway. Elizabeth whirled around in confusion, pulled her hand back as if scalded. How long had her ladyship been at the door, eavesdropping on their conversation? Elizabeth had not heard the door open.

“Lady Catherine,” said Elizabeth, trying to recover with a curtsey. “Will Anne and Mrs. Jenkins be joining us for dinner? I have asked Mrs. Reynolds to lay places for them—”

“ _You_ have done so?”

“Yes.”

“ _Not_ Miss Darcy?”

Elizabeth, wondering just what Lady Catherine found offensive in this, said, “I beg your pardon if I have gone against the prevailing custom, and Miss de Bourgh requires calf’s foot jelly and gruel in her room after every journey. I shall see to it at once, if that is the case.”

“And Miss Darcy cannot?”

What _was_ she getting at? “She is not presently in the room, Lady Catherine. If you particularly wish Miss Darcy to attend upon her cousin, I can fetch her for you, but she is washing after her usual ride—”

“No,” said Lady Catherine. “That is not necessary. Tell me, Mrs. Fitzwilliam, how is it precisely that you fill your time at Pemberley?”

Elizabeth answered confusedly. Darcy was in a mood and went to stare out the window, as if stationed as the watch at an encampment. Lady Catherine kept up this line of inquiry, demanding to know who ordered the dinners, who Mrs. Reynolds went to with questions, who issued invitations, and who visited the tenants. After five minutes of this, Darcy turned abruptly from the window and asked, “Lady Catherine, may I ask to what these questions tend?”

“You may,” said Lady Catherine graciously.

Darcy looked at her with mixed impatience and expectation.

“I merely wish to assure myself that my dear niece is ready to run her own household. I feared that that might be the reason she did not marry this season, but I am glad to hear it is not. I do wonder what keeps her.”

“Georgiana will marry whenever she feels ready,” said Darcy, in a deliberately even tone of voice. Darcy was about two minutes away from really losing his temper; Elizabeth was shocked that Lady Catherine could not see this.

“Shall we go dress for dinner?” Elizabeth asked brightly, and instead raced belowstairs, to keep Monsieur Bayard from from attacking the Kentish invaders with his carving knives.

“Can nothing be done, Mrs. Fitzwilliam?” Mrs. Reynolds whispered.

“I fear not,” replied Elizabeth. “The invitations are already sent.”

Monsieur Bayard let out the bellow of bull about to be put to death in a Spanish arena. “Eight days! You give me but _eight days_ for a ball, and do not even give me the management of my own kitchen! This is intolerable.”

“Believe me,” said Elizabeth, in French. “This was not my idea. I am not happy about it. Neither is Mr. Darcy. He would cancel the ball if he could. He does not like large parties like this. And for his birthday, too!”

The knowledge that someone was suffering more than him appeased Monsieur Bayard, somewhat; Elizabeth’s ranting in French about Lady Catherine did still more, and in the end, he was appeased enough to say, “Well! If the master suffers more than the rest of us— perhaps I may do one good thing for him. Tomorrow I make you a picnic. Lady Catherine will think it undignified to go; the master may have one afternoon free from her, on his birthday."

Elizabeth somewhat mistrusted this, and was sure she would return to the house tomorrow to discover Darcy’s chef had baked Lady Catherine’s into a pie, or carved him up as a roast, but Mrs. Reynolds assured her that she would not let anyone be murdered, and dinner that evening was so intolerable, Elizabeth agreed.

When she saw Darcy come out of his rooms the next morning, Elizabeth grabbed him by the hand and said, “Oh Darcy, you must come at once to the east meadow!”

“What is wrong?” he asked, rather bewildered.

“I am not fully informed of all the facts, but it is something that requires your immediate attention.” She shooed Boatswain down the stairs. “Do come, you are needed at once.”

“But for what specifically? I cannot be of any help if I do not know the particulars.”

Elizabeth felt exasperated. She had relied on his immediate acquiescence to her saying, ‘I need you.’ For God’s sake, he had traveled to an active war zone because she mentioned in passing that his cousin was a little feverish, why could he not just go to the east meadow because she wished it?

“The— the cows from the home farm are got into the meadow.”

“How could that be?” Darcy asked, baffled. “The home farm is nowhere near there.”

Elizabeth tried to tug him along. “I have no idea.”

“But—”

“Oh Darcy do come; all I can get are conflicting reports. And whatever the case, Boatswain will be useful.”

Darcy remained confused; it was only when she lead him to the base of the hill where Georgiana and Kitty were sitting with a picnic, that comprehension dawned.

“The cows were a diversionary tactic.”

“It took you that long to figure it out?” She laughed. “Ridiculous man. I know disguise of any sort is your abhorrence, but it was in the service of the greater good. This is a better birthday than the one you envisioned when Lady Catherine descended like a wolf on the fold, gleaming all in purple and gold, is it not?”

“Considerably.”

“And after you have eaten, you may read the new books we have all gotten you, and speak to no one all the rest of the afternoon. Or we can debate about  _The Giaour_  and I can promise in advance to lose."

Darcy glanced up the hill to make sure they could not be seen, and raised their linked hands to his lips. “I am not sure what gift is best.”

She tugged him up to the top of the hill. When they finished eating, Kitty and Elizabeth presented Darcy with a joint present of a new translation of de Vega’s most popular plays, as Kitty hadn't enough pocket money left for a full gift (Elizabeth slipped her more personal gift,  _The Corsair,_ and the rather sentimental inscription she had put in it, into the pile of other books). Georgianna had showered her brother with new novels and histories, and with craftwork, but did not stop with what could be manufactured out of wool and silk thread. The meadow was full of wildflowers, and she set herself to the production of daisy chains. This was a more complicated endeavor than she had anticipated and soon enlisted the rest of the party.

Elizabeth thought at first Georgiana had gone a step too far, but the august Master of Pemberley did not find it beneath his dignity to assist his sister in this new endeavor, and even smiled when Georgiana (through Kitty and Elizabeth's instruction) turned his crooked string of daisies into a flower crown.

“Lizzy can wear it,” suggested Kitty, taking Elizabeth’s bonnet.

Elizabeth was not entirely sure she wished to. She was already covered in vegetation, and rather occupied in trying to brush off all the dirt and bits of grass and daisy stems from her skirts. She stifled a sigh; she was in one of the off-white morning gowns of hers that still fit, and oddly missed her blacks— not because she wished still to mourn, but because she could get her hems hideously dirty without anyone noticing.

“The flower crown would look a bit odd with your cap,” Georgiana said.

“Do not make Mrs. Fitzwilliam wear my handiwork,” said Darcy. “It is not of a caliber to be displayed.”

Elizabeth took the flower crown and said, “Nonsense, Darcy, you are an excellent haberdasher. I literally take my cap off to you.”

Georgiana and Kitty scampered off to a promising clump of wildflowers, declaring their intent to decorate Boatswain with full garlands. Boatswain was entirely ignorant of this plan, but was happy that two people were fussing over him. He thumped his tail and turned his drooling head from Kitty to Georgiana with looks of utmost adoration.

Elizabeth watched them, smiling, as she tried to take off her cap without deranging the rest of her hair. She met with limited success; a couple of curls straggled down her neck by the time she had replaced cap with daisy crown.

“You look like a wood nymph,” said Darcy.

“I cannot tell if that is a compliment or not,” said Elizabeth, smoothing down the draping off-white muslin of her gown, “but I promise I shall not turn into a laurel tree if you try to kiss me.”

He was by now comfortable enough to smile at her, and reply, “I should not like to test it.”

“A pity, sir,” she replied, with a flirtatious look. “The risk of transformation is very slender indeed. You would obtain your object.”

“To crown myself in laurels would not be worth the cost.”

She laughed at him. “Well! I cannot imagine how Kitty and Georgiana would react to it; perhaps we had better not indulge now.”

They did later that evening, however, after Lady Catherine had finished presiding over another agonizing dinner. Her complaints were endless: though it had been lovely that morning, it was now raining; the sudden rain had given Anne a cough; her chef had quit, insisting that Pemberley was haunted (Elizabeth made a point of sending her compliments to Monsieur Bayard that evening); there were not sufficient pineapples to her purpose; etc.

Elizabeth observed, once the servant had left the tea things in the library, “You know, Lady Catherine reminds me of a Major-General I used to know. I was so very tempted to raise my napkin from my lap and wave it as a white flag.”

Darcy poured himself a snifter of brandy and then, after a moment’s hesitation, poured another for Elizabeth. “I think tea is insufficient this evening.”

She took the crystal tumbler with a smile; the _brandy de Jerez_ was sweet to her tongue, to her memory. It was still the taste, to her, of surviving a close-won battle. The habits of campaign were on her mind; she went poking about for the traveling chess set she had bought in Oporto and laid it out on the rug before the fire.

“Is there any reason you have chosen to sit in the cinders?” Darcy asked.

“I hate being cold,” she replied. “It does not feel in the least like summer and the rain has not helped that feeling at all. Come sit with me.”

Elizabeth played to lose within ten moves, and gave him a kiss that lasted minutes and included a far more roaming caress than any previous. Darcy responded with eager affection. She could not call it a particularly skilled response, but he learned quickly, and if she showed him something she liked, he took care to remember and replicate it later. This was so delightful a course of study, she could not quite bear to put a halt to it. Within a few days this had progressed to a point Elizabeth knew ventured far too close to impropriety. How, one evening three days before the ball, Darcy should come to be in his shirtsleeves, laying fully on top of her as he kissed her, right hand possessively tangled in her hair, was a question Elizabeth did not care to ask herself, for it would not reflect well on her powers of self-control or her sense of propriety. She felt guilt enough to remark, a little at random, that it was finally beginning to feel like summer and no doubt Darcy would have taken off his coat himself if she had not relieved him of it.

Darcy agreed, but he would have agreed to anything she said at that point. He would have given a hazy “oh yes, of course,” to an assertion that Boatswain had been summoned to the Vatican to become the next pope. He shifted weight to his elbows, so that he might gently touch her face with his left hand. Darcy said nothing, but his look was eloquent. There was so much of love in his expression, Elizabeth did not know how to act. Her pulse felt as if it would leap out of her neck; she was filled with a confused tenderness that nearly paralyzed her. She turned her face, as if to press her cheek more firmly in his hand, and cast her gaze down.

The cuff of Darcy’s left shirtsleeve was slightly pulled up from when she had pushed off his coat. Elizabeth really _meant_ not to look, to preserve his privacy, but she could not help but glimpse the top of a capital ‘E’ and part of what seemed to be the loop of an ‘l.’ Elizabeth felt a fresh stir of sympathy for Darcy, forever parted from Mrs. Wentworth, née Elliot, and pressed her lips to the base of his thumb and whispered a soft, “oh my dear Darcy.” She did not know how to end this; but the phrase itself was enough. It seemed to undo him, and things progressed to a point where he pressed so wonderfully, so maddeningly against her, Elizabeth said, “It’s alright— if you'd like to— that is, I wouldn't object if you—”

He was trembling.

She touched his hair, gently, hesitantly. “Darcy? Do you not want to? I do not mean to press you into anything that you do not want.”

“Elizabeth,” he said, hoarsely, “I can think of very few things I want more in life but I— not— not like this.”

She continued to pet his hair in reassurance. “True. The floor is not my favorite place for this, nor is it particularly comfortable; though this rug is easily more comfortable than a camp bed in the mud— or do you mean...?” Elizabeth did not know exactly how to phrase it and felt rather awkward when she asked, plain soldier: “Do you think this wrong when we are not married or soulmates?”

Darcy had buried his face against the side of her neck and pressed closer a moment. Elizabeth wondered if he was too embarrassed to answer or if he was merely gathering courage. He drew breath and got out a broken, “Elizabeth—”

There came a knock at the door.

They sprang apart as if from an incoming cannonball, hurriedly straightening clothing and hair.

“Yes, what is it?” Darcy called out, diving for his coat.

The butler said, “There is a curricle coming up the drive, sir. I believe Colonel Pascal is arrived.”

Elizabeth’s panic turned instantly to delight. “Oh, I didn't expect him until morning!” She smoothed her disordered locks as best she could, tugged straight her red gown and more-or-less tumbled down the hall and into the entranceway as Colonel Pascal came in. Their familiarity and ease with each other had only increased through the exchange of increasingly cheeky letters; her sarcasm and spirit amused him, and his sometimes catty fastidiousness amused her. They greeted each other with the warmth of old friends.

Darcy made efforts to match their spirit and tone, but he did not meet with much success.

Colonel Pascal noted this, and apologized for the late hour of his arrival. He smilingly cited the enthusiasm of the horses Darcy had so kindly sent from the Pemberley stables to the last posting inn as the cause of his breezing past Lambton, where he had been intending to spend the evening, and into Pemberley. This compliment to his stables made Darcy smile awkwardly rather than say anything; Colonel Pascal delicately offered the hope that he had not interrupted anything.

Elizabeth, thinking of just how close to terrible impropriety they had come, colored a little and said, “Oh, Darcy and I can resolve it another time. The game was getting a little too heated to be honest— Mrs. Reynolds, is Colonel Pascal's room ready yet? I have spoken to the cook about avoiding pork and shellfish but I am not sure I could make him perfectly understand about meat and milk—”

“Oh pray do not put yourself out over that,” said Colonel Pascal, smilingly. “Monsieur Bayard was always very accommodating in London, and I must confess that I can survive without being kosher. I did, and often too, while on campaign. I only insist on avoiding _traif_ meals in England, for fear of it getting back to my mother. She would have a great deal to say on my daring to eat ham.”

“Oh!” Elizabeth exclaimed, reminded by the mention of officious and loquacious relations, “I ought to warn you Lady Catherine is here. I shall tell you more about it tomorrow.” She directed Colonel Pascal up the stairs and made up some excuse about dinner the next day that required her to hang back with Darcy. She pressed his hand and said, quietly, hoping the servants would not hear her, “I am sorry Darcy— I hope I did not cross the Rubicon.”

“Your willingness to oblige my own—”

“Do not speak so,” said Elizabeth, in the tone of quiet authority she had developed on campaign. “I will not have you blame yourself for something we both want a little too much to be sensible. We will talk again when our... tempers are a little cooler.” She thought this cover effective, especially since Mrs. Pattinson said, as she was helping Elizabeth undress for bed, “I heard talk that you and Mr. Darcy was quarreling this evening, ma’am— did you try and ask to be rid of Lady Catherine as a forfeit?”

Elizabeth laughed, a little relieved. “No, not exactly— I know he wouldn't accept such terms. But I do admit to being a little frustrated with Lady Catherine’s being here. She pursued me into the stillroom today! I thought she'd never deign to step foot in there.”

“Lady Catherine is wearing on everyone's tempers, ma’am,” said Mrs. Pattinson. “Her Ladyship weren't too pleased her chef thought the kitchen was haunted and refused to stay.”

Elizabeth hadn't heard all the details of Monsieur Bayard’s attempt to drive out invaders, and Mrs. Pattinson was pleased to give them. The next morning Elizabeth felt a little worried that Monsieur Bayard would fly into a passion about the restrictions of diet upon which Colonel Pascal was unwilling to compromise, but Chef Bayard was magnanimous in victory, and so glad to have another Frenchman in the house (or rather, one that would not take over his kitchen), he did not appear to mind.

“I am glad not to be troublesome,” said Colonel Pascal, as they were driving to the hospital, in his curricle, “especially as my batman said that the household is a little....” He coughed, as delicately as a communion wafer breaking, “Disordered at present.”

Elizabeth took some pleasure in reporting that the staff at Pemberley had organized rather marvelously— not in the pursuit of their duties, but against Lady Catherine. Odd little protests had begun to happen, starting with Monsieur Bayard’s fiendishly clever opening salvo against Lady Catherine’s chef. Kitty and Georgianna seemed to be a part of this guerilla campaign, and though Elizabeth often _thought_ she ought to speak with them about it, she conveniently forgot whenever the opportunity presented itself. She really did think she ought to have done when she and Mr. Darcy found themselves locked in the stillroom for an entire afternoon. But they passed the time pleasantly enough, drinking orange wine and discussing whether or not _Much Ado About Nothing_ or _As You Like It_ was the better comedy, until Elizabeth recalled the time she and her friends Mrs. Kirke, Mrs. Kearney, and Mrs. MacDougal had been taken prisoner by the French and had pulled the rods from the hinges of the locked door. It had been much easier to achieve this in Pemberley, with Mr. Darcy’s strength, than it had been in Spain. Then she and Mr. Darcy  were locked in the library, which they honestly did not notice, until Georgiana unlocked it some hours later. Then they were locked in the woods, which neither much minded, either. When they tired of the outdoors, Elizabeth was able to essay the lock on the gate with a hairpin and the gold wire of her earring, which cruelly mortified Darcy’s gardener, and amused Darcy considerably.

It was unclear to both Darcy and Elizabeth why they kept being locked places they could quite easily escape, but she supposed— given the example Monsieur Bayard had set with the picnic— it was for plausible deniability. When Lady Catherine ranted at dinner over something or other going wrong, or being denied her, Darcy and Elizabeth could look honestly puzzled, and have excuses as to why they were not responsible. But, as Lady Catherine never stopped talking long enough to demand answers from anybody, this had not yet come up.

“My word,” said Colonel Pascal, lips twitching. “This is quite a fascinating guerilla campaign.”

“Yes, rather! I feel very at home at Pemberley now that it is at war.”

“Even when you and Mr. Darcy are the victims of friendly fire?”

“Ha! I hardly mind it. We are good enough friends that it is no particular hardship to be forced to remain together in one spot, until I display my more unladylike accomplishments.”

“You and Mr. Darcy seem... closer, even, than you were in January.”

Elizabeth opened her mouth to say joke about this, but then blushed suddenly, and said more seriously, “I suppose we are— but it is... complicated.”

Colonel Pascal looked askance at her, but said, “You needn’t tell me about it until you feel easier about talking of it.”

Elizabeth was grateful for this, and they were so long in military gossip and talk of the hospital instead, both with each other and with Colonel Dunne, Colonel Dunne offered to host the two of them for an informal dinner. Elizabeth hesitated at first, but agreed. She sent a rather playful note to Darcy— she hoped not inappropriately so— begging pardon for their absence and asking him if he would still take tea with her that evening. She hoped rather than believed she would know what to say by then; her own feelings were in such confusion she would only blush and immediately start talking at random of something else. It would have relieved her very much to see any footman in Darcy livery stop by Colonel Dunne’s house, with a note in Darcy's painfully correct penmanship. However, the only message was a note from Kitty and Georgiana conveying their envy that they could not dine informally with Colonel Dunne as well.

Elizabeth thought that this was probably the reason she was ambushed as soon as she arrived home; but then Kitty and Georgiana waved cards of lace at her and bombarded her with questions of everything she would wear the next day.

“I plan to wear my pearl gray satin,” Elizabeth began.

Georgiana and Kitty exchanged mute looks of horror, and at once marched out of the room and up the stairs.

“I think war has been declared against my wardrobe,” said Elizabeth to Colonel Pascal.

“You had best go defend it,” he agreed.

As Darcy had not replied to her note— and she had made enough noise coming in that if he wished to see her he would have come out— Elizabeth resisted the temptation to go look into the library. She went quickly up the stairs, instead, but not quickly enough to keep Kitty and Georgiana from throwing open closets and trunks and attempting to enlist Mrs. Pattinson in their campaign against the pearl gray satin ball gown.

“Mrs. Fitzwilliam can finally dance again!” Kitty exclaimed. “But no one will ask her if she goes about in gray!”

“Mrs. Pattinson, you are under no obligation to listen to my sister,” said Elizabeth. “We agreed on the gray satin.”

“Mrs. Pattinson,” said Kitty, wheedlingly, “surely my sister has at least _one_ ballgown that is not black or gray or purple?”

Mrs. Pattinson hesitated and said, “There is one gown I think might suit.”

Elizabeth was quite surprised to hear this. Though she had been making more of an effort to exercise and indulge less at table, progress was slow and most of the gowns she had bought in Paris in the spring of ‘15 still did not fit. “Really?”

“Since Lady Catherine is come, madame, I found it best to be out of the servants’ hall and have been working on something of a project— though you aren't obliged to wear it if you do not wish, Mrs. Fitzwilliam....”

Elizabeth's mind misgave her. Mrs. Pattinson’s strength as a lady’s maid had been her ability to arrange hair and headdresses; her sewing was generally limited to repairs or picking apart clothes to be dyed, and then sewing them back together. “Mrs. Pattinson, really, you needn't have gone through the extra work—”

“Well, Maudie the parlor maid wants to be a lady’s maid, ma’am,” said Mrs. Pattinson, a little guilty. “She's my daughter's age, and I thought— she needs some experience with fine gowns, and the care and mending of them— and I wouldn't have presumed if Miss Darcy hadn't mentioned Maudie was wishing it, last week. And her mentioning it to me again after that, that it was her own wish Maudie be trained.”

“My brother always says we must do what we can to help the staff at Pemberley succeed,” said Georgiana, blushing. “Surely...?”

Elizabeth knew when she had been outmaneuvered. She threw up her hands. “Humbugged, by God! Bring in your project, Mrs. Pattinson, and your protege.”

Maudie entered not ten minutes later, very carefully carrying in one of the ball dresses Elizabeth had commissioned in Paris— indeed, the very one that Mrs. Pattinson had been most insistent upon saving from getting dyed black with the rest of Elizabeth's wardrobe. It was a pretty concoction of ivory silk batiste and embroidered white net, glittering here and there with silver thread and crystal beading arranged to look like flowering branches. The long train of the net skirt cascaded over Maudie’s arm, catching the light beautifully.

“We let out the gown a little,” Mrs. Pattinson murmured, as Maudie carefully and nervously laid out the dress on the bed, “at the waist, ma’am— the bodice used to be gathered, so there was enough fabric— we steamed out any wrinkles, and then cut the net. Truth be told, ma’am, I thought just having it attached at the waist looked too French to me, too much like them trained overrobes the Empress Josephine and her ladies used to wear. So when we cut the waist and saw we couldn't expand the net, Maudie suggested we open it to show the batiste under and used what we cut over the sleeves and bodice— and added a ribbon, ma’am.”

Silver ribbon pinned down the embroidered net where it appeared to cross itself, just under the bust, exposing triangles of the creamy batiste above and below. Elizabeth suddenly recalled Darcy in the library, the smile he had given her as he passed over “She walks in beauty,” with its talk of dark and bright, and his preference for her black spangled muslin. He seemed rather to like it when she sparkled.

“You have put such work into it,” said Elizabeth, wavering. “And I suppose the diamond parure with it?”

“Yes, ma’am; it would look right elegant.”

“I suppose it cannot hurt to try it on,” said Elizabeth. She was relieved to discover that even in the flexible short-stays she wore during the day she fit into the gown; and further, that Maudie was a good enough seamstress to know what curves of Elizabeth’s figure to emphasize and which to try and lessen, while still keeping the whole comfortable. Elizabeth twirled experimentally. She rather liked the way the net now floated, half-a-second behind the heavier batiste, and how it sparkled as she moved, as if it was winking to her in encouragement.

“Oh Lizzy, _please_ ,” begged Kitty. “You must wear it, you must! You look so very elegant.”

“It seems boorish not to, after Mrs. Pattinson and Maudie have been at such pains to alter the gown,” said Elizabeth, knowing she had been beaten. “Georgiana, will you speak to Mrs. Reynolds about having someone else pick up Maudie's usual duties? At least until September? Maudie, you are really an exceptional seamstress— I should be glad to see you trained as a lady’s maid, if Mrs. Pattinson is still agreeable.”

This was an answer to suit everyone.

And the next day, after she had washed, put on the appropriate undergarments, and had her hair more elaborately dressed, Elizabeth admitted to being rather pleased Kitty and Georgiana had opened a secondary front against her half-mourning gowns. It had not distracted them from their campaign against Lady Catherine— for Lady Catherine had been heard muttering at breakfast that she would be glad to go back to Rosings Park— and it had been rather a long time since Elizabeth had put on anything quite so pretty. Indeed, Elizabeth felt rather light-hearted as Mrs. Pattinson fastened the diamond bracelet about her gloved wrist.

“I suppose I do not discredit you, Mrs. Pattinson?”

“I should be very surprised if you sit out any dance at all, Mrs. Fitzwilliam, and that’s a fact,” said Mrs. Pattinson, with great satisfaction. “I do flatter myself, but I do not think anyone in the parish has dressed their lady better.”

Elizabeth laughed and went into the hall. Darcy had just exited his own room and froze in the doorway, staring at her. His gaze was openly admiring— though when he saw _she_ saw him looking at her, Darcy blushed. She felt herself starting to blush as well. It was difficult not to recall how achingly wonderful it had felt to have him pressing against her the last time she had seen or spoke to him in relative privacy. He had missed breakfast yesterday (no doubt out of embarrassment), and that morning, he and Colonel Pascal had talked of the hospital and vinegar trials to the exclusion of all else, and immediately gone off to the library afterwards to consult some architectural drawings of the hospital. Darcy had asked if she would like to come along, making a clear effort to pretend that they had never engaged in blatant improprieties in the aforementioned library; but Mrs. Reynolds had come in, with French insufficient to the challenge of keeping Chef Bayard from throttling the assistant gamekeeper with a cheesecloth, as recompense for being given an insufficient number of partridges.

“Um,” said Elizabeth, at the height of eloquence. “Darcy! You look well. Ball dress suits you.” Most dress suited him, in point of fact; but in formal attire it was difficult to tear one’s eyes away. Or at least it was for Elizabeth that evening.

“It is a great pleasure to see you out of mourning,” said Darcy, managing to shut the door to his room, after a couple of tries. “I, ah. I hope you have not— you have not a partner for the first?”

“No— but Darcy really! You haven't asked anyone to dance yet?”

He offered her his arm. “No.”

She laughed and declared she would save him from his own folly, especially as she had only promised the reel to Colonel Dunne and the supper set to Colonel Pascal. When they got to the bottom of the staircase, she cleared her throat, but could not think of anything to say, let alone how to ask what she wanted to; there were servants walking about, and guests arriving within the quarter hour, and the other members of the household expected down any moment. Elizabeth turned to look at Darcy.

 _Why_ did he have to be the handsomest man of her acquaintance? Even just standing in the entrance hall, looking down at her curiously, he looked like something Sir Thomas Lawrence had just unveiled at the Royal Academy as the Romantic ideal of an English gentleman. She gave herself a mental shake but all that came rattling out of her brain was, “I hope you will forgive me for missing our tea yesterday; but as soon as I returned from the hospital I was ambushed. Both my sister and yours were so shocked when I said I would wear the same gown I wore to Lady Metcalfe’s, they rearranged the household staff, somehow convinced my maid to remake one of my old ball gowns, and sprung the change on me last evening, pretending it was _not_ a _fait accompli_. One must admire their skill; though I do feel a little odd to be wearing white once again.”

“I have never seen you look lovelier,” he said, his gloved fingertips gentle at her cheek.

‘This is how I got in trouble last time,’ Elizabeth thought and though she blushed, she was too amazed that Darcy was not mentally castigating himself to step away. She smiled up at him and said, “Such gallantry, sir! But I was not fishing for a compliment.”

“I know,” he said, smiling down at her. “But I wished to give you one.”

“Well! If it was said for your own pleasure, then I really cannot protest.”

She was sure he might have kissed her then, so nearly in public, but there was a loud noise from the ballroom, followed by what was unmistakably Lady Catherine’s voice. Darcy looked heavenward and dropped his hand back to his side, saying, “It is no matter, about the tea; I had to ride out to the lead mine by Barmote—” this being a village between Pemblery and the High Peak “— just before breakfast and was not back until well after dark. They have reached the water table and are considering what is to be done, since the other shaft there has killed every canary they had sent down it.”

“Oh good! That is— it is _not_ good, I am very sorry for the people of Barmote and the mineworkers, and _especially_ the poor canaries, but I— I would not have you think I was avoiding you, and I had hoped you were not avoiding me. You did not answer my note!”

“I did not get it until this morning,” he replied, then said, looking down at her with something of a pained expression. “I do not know how to begin what I must say. I started half-a-dozen notes to you yesterday, and then again this afternoon, in reply to your own, but I could not....”

“If they are notes of apology,” Elizabeth warned him, “I shall pretend to sprain my ankle on the way into the ballroom, and spend the rest of the ball finding you partners for every single dance.”

Darcy looked both exasperated and amused. “Explanation, merely. There is—there are matters we must discuss—”

Lady Catherine began to berate one of the footmen, loudly enough for it to echo along the hallway.

“It shall keep, Darcy,” said Elizabeth. “I think we are needed. But do reassure me that you are neither full of self-recrimination, nor full of contempt for the wanton creature you admitted to your home as a chaperone for your sister.”

Darcy reassured her on both counts, though he looked unhappy their conversation would be further delayed. Lady Catherine was talked down from her rage at the simplicity of the decorations, though Elizabeth was not sure if this was because Elizabeth had brought up the fact that too many flowers might make Anne unwell, or if it was because the butler announced the appearance of the first coach of the evening.

Elizabeth felt very well contented, despite everything. Matters were... complicated, but Darcy was not upset, and indeed, seemed to admire her as much as ever; Colonel Pascal was visiting; she had her hand solicited for three more dances while receiving everyone; and though she had at first felt uncertain about her gown, she had received so many compliments on it, and Darcy’s gaze lingered on her so admiringly, she began to regain her confidence.

Darcy was quiet during their dance. Elizabeth kept up a steady stream of conversation to which he could respond to if he wished, but made it clear he did not have to if he was feeling overwhelmed, as he often was by large crowds. Occasionally he replied to something she said, but was only roused to coherent conversation when she suggested Colonel Dunne or Colonel Pascal might have some friends in the royal engineering corps that could be invited in to take a look at the Barmote mine. She knew several engineers herself, but as their specialities tended to be the construction and demolition of Spanish bridges, she doubted they would be of much help.

To Elizabeth’s delight, she was not in want of a partner for the first half of the evening until some debutants tried their luck and attempted to bribe the orchestra into playing a waltz. With an anxious spurt of panic, she went over to stop the musicians before they had gotten through four bars.

“Why not let them bring in a touch of continental elegance?” asked Colonel Pascal, who was near her, talking to Darcy’s neighbor, Mr. Totley. “I am sure you danced the waltz abroad— in Brussels, if not in Paris. Your neighbors could stand to be a bit more cosmopolitan.”

“Well, Colonel Hussy!” she exclaimed in mock outrage, hands to her hips. “If _you_ wish to spend the rest of the ball having my aunt Catherine and all the more respectable chaperones in a thirty mile radius come up to you demanding to know why you have allowed unmarried men and women to embrace each other in the middle of a crowded room, I shall certainly rescind my order.”

“Point, set, and match to Mrs. Fitzwilliam.” He shuddered and turned back to Mr. Totley.

The dance had begun; it was too late to find a partner and join the set. Elizabeth was a little sorry not to dance again, but she was truthfully feeling rather tired. She had not danced quite so much in so very long— not since the Duchess of Richmond’s ball. In fact, the waltz at the Duchess of Richmond’s ball had been the last time she had danced with her husband—

The memory pounced upon her, suddenly, like a tiger springing out of the darkness.

The nearest empty chair was by Miss de Bourgh. Elizabeth surreptitiously wiped her tears away with her fingertips, went to sit, and made a comment about the heat of the room.

Miss de Bourgh applied herself to her glass of champagne, instead of saying anything, or even acknowledging that anything had been said. Miss de Bourgh was expensively attired in a blossom-colored silk evening gown, the skirt hanging down in triangles, almost like a medieval jester’s tunic, over a Turkey red petticoat, stiffened into a bell shape with gold frogging and lace about the hem. Miss de Bough had added to this a wrap of white chinchilla fur, and a set of huge, gaudy rubies as hideous as the ones Elizabeth had inherited from a Fitzwilliam great-aunt, and seldom took out of her jewellery box. She was somewhat horrified to think the Fitzwilliams had been so fond of the tasteless, Elizabethan settings that someone had seen either her necklace or Miss de Bourgh’s and been so impressed as to have it copied— or could not bear to have only _one_ such hideous piece within the family and had to commission two.

It was an amusing enough thought to make grief loosen its clawed grip, and she managed to smile and ask, “Are you enjoying yourself this evening, Miss de Bourgh?”

Miss de Bourgh inclined her head about a centimeter.

“Have you danced much?”

Miss de Bourgh looked witheringly at her and then, directed her gaze to the male half of the set, all neatly lined up, and in the middle of a more ridiculous figure in the dance. She then raised an eyebrow and sneered faintly, as if to say, ‘why would I waste my time standing up with such silly creatures?’

“Ah,” said Elizabeth. She always found it difficult being alone with Miss de Bourgh. “I... ah, I have not seen you very much this visit. I believe I have seen you only at dinners, in fact. I trust you are not in ill-health?”

Miss de Bourgh looked at Elizabeth with yet more withering scorn. Of course she was in ill-health.

“I am very sorry you are still feeling unwell,” said Elizabeth.

Miss de Bourgh waved this away with a faint flicker of gloved fingertips, to signify that she always felt unwell, but she was accustomed to it.

“I... hope you will let me know if there is anything that can be done for you?”

Miss de Bourgh looked skeptical.

A very awkward silence descended.

After a moment Elizabeth said, “Do you and your mother intend to stay long at Pemberley?”

Miss de Bourgh sighed and gestured at a passing servant for another glass of champagne.

“I hope Pemberley itself has been to your liking?”

Miss de Bourgh halted the footman and, placing down her empty glass, took a third.

Then, for the first time in Elizabeth’s memory, Miss de Bourgh said something: “No.”

“Beg pardon?”

“You are insisting upon conversation,” said Miss de Bourgh, in a thin, sour tone, “so you shall get it. No, I do not like Pemberley. It is so plainly decorated a place, and the comforts here are Spartan to the extreme. One can always tell Pemberley began life as a hunting lodge.”

To call Pemberley in its current, stately, and tasteful form anything like a hunting lodge would be akin to going up to one of the patrons of Almack’s and exclaiming that they looked like the dirty toddlers they once had been. If the shock of Anne de Bourgh’s speaking with her had not already struck Elizabeth dumb, this certainly would have.

“One puts up with all manner of inconvenience in the name of family, of course,” said Miss de Bourgh, upper lip curling, “but I really wonder if Mama does not go too far. She is always too soft on this generation, too willing to make excuses.”

Astonishment crowded out all other feeling. Elizabeth would never have called Lady Catherine _too soft_ on this generation of Fitzwilliams. She would sooner have called Pemberley a hunting lodge.

“You, for example— Mama is always talking about how you were not born into the circles in which you move, to excuse your wallowing in the mud of every country in Europe, and spends far too much time advising you on matters you should have learnt to manage yourself at this point. How you did not know you are only supposed to wear black a six-month, before moving to half-mourning, I do not know!”

“It was out of a very deep grief, not out of ignorance or an overactive sense of propriety,” said Elizabeth, through clenched teeth. “Miss de Bourgh, you have no right—”

But Miss de Bourgh had tasted the liberty of speech her mother indulged in, as well as a few too many glasses of champagne; she was not going to stop. She decided to bestow her opinions of the whole family on Elizabeth. Honoria was a heathen who ought to have been released into the wilds of Scotland at a much earlier age to paint herself blue and shriek about the patriarchy where no civilized person could be bothered by her. Sybil was a nonentity and was not missed when she fled to Tahiti. Arabella was a spoilt brat with more hair than wit. The partners of her female cousins were not English and therefore beneath Anne de Bourgh’s notice. It was all to the good Honoria would not have children, and that Sybil and Arabella’s children would live out their days abroad, and therefore would not ruin the Fitzwilliam name in England. Lord Stornoway ought to have been smothered at birth, for the good of the bloodline as a whole, for his children were all noisome brats who inherited his lack of wit and their mother’s conniving nature. Oh how Lady Catherine was so led astray by her one weakness— her overactive love for her family— to claim that Lord Stornoway had been dropped on his head as a child, that Lady Stornoway was a Spencer and could not help that political machination was in her blood!

The Darcy siblings were useless and selfish, caring only for their own comforts. Because they were comfortable with the Spartan conditions at Pemberley, they assumed everyone would be. And oh, how terrible they were with society! As soon as there was anything more than two people in the room with him, Darcy was sure to go glower out a window, or hide in a book, or pretend to have business elsewhere— really, it little better than having a feral cat in the room. Georgiana was so pointlessly shy Anne was sure Georgiana had once gone into a room, seen her shadow, mistaken it for another person, and immediately frozen in terror. It was no wonder neither of them were married. If ever a potential soulmate got up the courage to approach so unwelcoming a pair, the Darcy siblings would hiss and bolt into the night, ears flattened back.

“Metaphorically, one hopes,” said Elizabeth. It occurred to Elizabeth that Anne said next to nothing to her not out of ill-health or reserve, but out of a sense of such heightened superiority that speaking Elizabeth would have been a degradation. “I hope you will spare me your opinion of my dead husband, and my failure to continue on the bloodline, for I find your mother’s _kindness_ on that head to be more than I can bear with equanimity as it is— no doubt yet another shocking proof of my unsuitability for the circles into which I married! If this is truly what you think of all your relations—”

“It is.”

“—I wonder how you could stay silent about your mother’s plans to marry you to Darcy!”

“It is because of this that I have acquiesced to her plan.”

“ _What_?”

Miss de Bourgh lifted her chin. “I am the best of my generation. It is a pity all the health should go to my cousins while I alone have all the qualities which animated my mother and my aunt, Lady Anne Darcy, but my Mama has impressed upon me the duty I owe to England, to pass on the good of our bloodline.” She finished off her glass of champagne, and said, with the sigh of a martyr going to the stake, “At least Darcy is reasonably good-looking, for all he is the most disagreeable man in England.”

“Darcy is truly one of the best men I have ever known,” Elizabeth said, unable to keep her temper. “Anyone who had the privilege of being his spouse could rightly be considered one of the happiest creatures in England. How on earth can you speak of marriage to him as some kind of punishment to be endured, rather than a very great pleasure?”

“You asked,” said Miss de Bourgh. “I answered. It is not my fault if you cannot handle the truth.”

Elizabeth jumped to her feet, giving some hasty excuse, and stormed out onto the terrace. It did not surprise her that Darcy followed her and— after a somewhat Anne de Bourgh-like thought that Darcy would of course use any excuse to flee a ball, especially one in his honor— she thought it charmingly, irritatingly typical of him, to drop everything upon seeing her in distress.

“Elizabeth, are you alright?”

“Has Miss de Bourgh ever spoken to you, really spoken?” Elizabeth asked, when they were far enough from the doors to avoid being overheard.

“Not in recent memory. What did she say to you?”

“A great many things that I cannot not repeat without adding in language better suited to a battlefield than a ballroom— and principally that that she is the best of our generation, and it is clearly up to her to carry on the bloodline. You have been enlisted in that cause.”

“She shall have to battle on without my assistance. I am not inclined to let Lady Catherine matchmake. I put it out of my head nearly as soon as it was suggested; pray do the same.” Darcy watched her as she paced and said, “I cannot help but feel there is more to this. She did not say something to you about Richard, or about....” He made a vague gesture to her midriff.

Elizabeth stared at him in absolute incomprehension and then said, confusedly, “Oh! My miscarriage. Good Lord, that was... what, back in ‘12? Yes, I think it was. I recall it being the day after Mr. Wickham paid us his charming social call. Thank God neither she nor Aunt Catherine know about it. I hardly think of it myself these days. It is too painful a thing; and I do not like to dwell on any part of the past that brings pain rather than pleasure. No, no, she said things about _you_ that infuriated me past endurance.”

Darcy looked surprised and oddly pleased.

Elizabeth smiled despite herself, and shook her head, setting her curls swinging. “Ridiculous man, did you think I would sit there and let _Cousin Anne_ abuse you? I love you too dearly for that.”

Darcy’s expression was difficult to decipher; before Elizabeth could really look into it, the supper set was announced. Elizabeth sighed. “No rest for the weary! At least I have promised the next to Colonel Pascal.”

Upon seeing her expression of barely suppressed vexation, Colonel Pascal suggested, “Why do we not take a turn about the gardens? The Chinese lanterns below the terrace seem to me very pretty; I have a great desire to see them.”

Elizabeth agreed to this. When they were still decrously within sight from the house, but sufficiently far to prevent eavesdropping, Colonel Pascal took out a cheroot and said, a little apologetically, “A noxious habit, I know, but I picked up the habit of smoking them in India. The scent of tobacco keeps away the mismas that cause malaria.”

“Oh please smoke as you like,” said Elizabeth. “The smell of tobacco always reminds me of Spain, where I would much rather be than here, right now.”

Colonel Pascal lit a match from one of the hanging strings of lanterns and delicately touched it to the end of his cheroot. “Ah. I saw you talking to Miss de Bourgh earlier, and wondered if she took after her mother.”

“Bravo, sir, you have guessed quite rightly. Her conversation was odious in the extreme. Anne, best of her generation, has nothing good to say about all the rest of us— especially Darcy! I think I told you, did I not, that Lady Catherine wishes Miss de Bourgh and Darcy to marry?”

Colonel Pascal shook out the match as delicately as a viscountess ringing a bell for her servant. “I cannot think they would be happy together.”

“No, nor I, and—” She hesitated. “Oh, Pascal, it’s a stupid tangle at present.”

“How so?”

“Well I—” ‘I think I am in love with Darcy,’ came to her, but this thought jolted her unpleasantly, as if she had miscounted steps on a staircase and put her foot through empty air. “I... I have just met Darcy’s soulmate.”

“You have?”

“Yes, a Mrs. Wentworth. She was a Ms. Elliot— a Ms. Anne Elliot. She was a guest at Caroline Bingley’s wedding. Unfortunately she is married to a Captain Frederick Wentworth—”

“Of the navy?” asked Colonel Pascal, as if searching his memory. “A very good friend of Captain Harville’s?”

“I don’t know a Captain Harville, I’m afraid, but he was of the navy.”

“Was he golden-haired and distractingly attractive?”

Elizabeth blushed.

Colonel Pascal took a rather smug drag on his cheroot. “Then we are speaking of the same Captain Wentworth.”

“But, in any case, Captain Wentworth gave his wife at least two children. And Anne Elliot  appears to have at least been married to Captain Wentworth when she and Darcy first met. Poor Darcy, he has terrible times at weddings. At my sister Jane’s wedding, five years ago, it came out that his soulmate was married with children. And now he has seen her again! Mrs. Wentworth is such a lovely woman I cannot resent her for breaking Darcy’s heart, but she seems entirely ignorant that Darcy was in love with her.”

“Is?”

Elizabeth hesitated. “I... I do not quite know. I have certain reasons to believe he has moved on.”

Colonel Pascal was frowning at the glowing end of his cheroot.

“What?”

“If the Captain Wentworth you mentioned is the one I am thinking of, the math does not quite work out,” said Colonel Pascal, with a sort of well-bred reticence. “It was in 1812 Darcy’s soulmate— or the person he believed to be his soulmate— was married with children?”

“Yes; I have that on fairly good authority.” She briefly explained about Mr. Wickham and his threats— though her memory of those events were somewhat hazy, from the shock and sleeplessness with which she had witnessed it, and four intervening years of life. She did recall that Mr. Wickham had threatened to expose Darcy's soulmark, and had espeically threatened to reveal his mark to Darcy's soulmate, a woman who was happily married with children.

“Captain Wentworth and Miss Anne Elliot were not married until 1815,” he said. “I know this for a fact, for Captain Harville was a groomsman for Captain Wentworth.”

“Who is Captain Harville— wait, no—” Elizabeth sorted through her memories. “Mrs. Harville is Mrs. Kirke’s sister in Lyme, is she not?”

“I was going to say ‘Colonel Robinson’s sister,’ but yes, both are true. Mrs. Harville had to postpone a planned visit to Paris to see her siblings in order to attend the wedding. I remember it particularly, as Colonel Robinson joked to me that this turned out to be a stroke of luck, for Napoleon had nearly arrived in Paris when he received Mrs. Harville’s letter, saying she would not be coming to France.”

“But,” said Elizabeth, a little surprised, “the Wentworths have two children. Two boys— the eldest of which must be at least four.”

“No, they have only the one, if memory serves— Captain Harville was godfather to their first child, who was—”

“Named after his father, Frederick, obviously.” Elizabeth smacked her hand to her forehead.

“Yes, I imagine so.”

“I was forgetting there was a third Miss Elliot— a Miss Mary Elliot, who is now a Mrs. Musgrove. Does she have children, do you know?”

“I know a small child called Walter Musgrove kicked Captain Harville in the leg wound, and I was appealed to in light of an arbitrator, when both Colonel Robinson and Mrs. Kirke had rival receipts of poultices they thought best. That was... let me think... in the fall of ‘14? I recall its being in Paris, and them visiting me in the Marais—” this being the Jewish quarter of Paris “—at the time. It was certainly before the spring of ‘15.”

“But... no, that does not make sense. Mr. Wickham must have been speaking of a hypothetical, for everything else works out. Darcy must have realized Miss Elliot wasn’t his soulmate when he met Miss _Anne._ ”

“But if Miss Anne were free until last year, what kept him from marrying her? Or her from him, if they were a true match?”

She made a frustrated noise. “Then I am at a total loss. But— it cannot possibly be Mrs. Musgrove, she would suit him even less than Miss Elliot! And there are only the three— Miss... God what was her name. Anne Elliot Wentworth and Mary Elliot Musgrove I recall.”

“Why are you so certain it must be one of the Miss Elliots?”

“I have seen part of Darcy’s soulmark,” Elizabeth admitted, reluctantly. “The start of ‘Elliot’ at least. And Georgiana told me that later that year he met someone he knew to be his soulmate and therefore never renewed his acquaintance with Miss  Elliot, even though everyone expected them to become engaged.”

They heard applause above them. Colonel Pascal dropped the end of his cheroot to the gravel and ground out the ember. “I suppose we must to supper. But— on one point, Mrs. Fitzwilliam, I admit to a somewhat unmannerly curiosity. You and Mr. Darcy are apparently close enough for you to see part of his mark....”

She blushed.

Colonel Pascal said, gently, “You must give yourself permission to move on, my dear. I fancy I knew Richard as well as you did, and he would not have wished you to go about wearing the willow forever. Don’t tell me you believe this English nonsense about there being only one person in the world with whom you can be happy.”

“I find myself in sympathy with the French school,” said Elizabeth, “which will please you, I am sure. I think perhaps....” She wrestled with how best to express an idea that had taken root back in the summer at Matlock House, and whose growth she had been uncomfortably eyeing ever since. “I think the ‘Fitzwilliam’ on my wrist means the people bearing that name are the ones who shall most change my life.”

“Well,” said Colonel Pascal, as they went up the steps, “in the past few years, I have come to the conclusion that a soulmark means only what the person bearing it thinks it means. There is no objective right answer to the question, ‘What is a soulmate?’ or even, ‘What does my mark mean?’ It is really all up to the individual. After all, it is our choices that define us.”

“That’s so dreadfully French of— Lady Catherine?”

Lady Catherine was at the door leading in from the terrace.

“Lady Catherine,” said Elizabeth, through gritted teeth. “How may I be of assistance?”

Lady Catherine drew herself up to her not inconsiderable height, looking extremely imposing in the long-trained gown of expensively over-decorated gold silk she wore. She closed her fan with a snap. “I wonder, Mrs. Fitzwilliam,” said she, “if we might take a turn about the terrace together.”

Colonel Pascal looked askance at Elizabeth, who waved him away. “It’s fine, Colonel Pascal. I think Lady Catherine and I are rather overdue for a talk, truth be told.”

When Lady Catherine finished critiquing the potted rosebushes Elizabeth had had stationed about the terrace, she said, abruptly, “You can be at no loss, Mrs. Fitzwilliam, as to why I have pulled you aside like this.”

“I imagine it has something to do with the fact that your daughter told me she hates Darcy, and my being seen to talk to Darcy immediately after this confession,” she said dryly.

“Anne does not hate him.”

“Oh no, I am very aware she hates everyone of her generation in the family. She was remarkably frank on that point.”

Lady Catherine extended her fan out, as a dueller extending a fencing foil, as Elizabeth tried to walk through the door back into the ballroom. “This was not the matter I wished to discuss with you.”

“Then I am at a loss!”

“I see,” said Lady Catherine, “that when I advised you to stop wearing black, I ought to have been more specific. I did not mean you ought to comport yourself in this shameless manner, and dance all evening.”

“ _What?_ ”

"At least two gentlemen," said Lady Catherine disapprovingly, "asked if now you were out of mourning, you were thinking of marrying again."

"... and this very natural question offends you... how?"

“We do not marry again in this family,” said Lady Catherine, staring down her nose at Elizabeth. Then she sighed and shook her head. “My brother Matlock warned me of this before he went to Tahiti. ‘Lady Catherine,’ he said, ‘Mrs. Fitzwilliam is young and has no children. She may wish to marry again. It is a natural thing for a woman to want children.’ And to that I must agree, but I cannot countenance your marrying again; not when you and the colonel were a match. I know so, for I made the match myself.”

Elizabeth threw her hands up. “There is no pleasing your ladyship! When I had been a widow a month you told me to quit weeping; when I was not yet a year and a day into mourning you told me to think of quitting it! And yet, when I follow this advice to its natural end, and wish to re-marry and have children, you tell me I must not! What is it I can do that will meet with your approbation? I think it is clear that there is nothing.”

Her carelessly loosed shaft hit its mark. Elizabeth had been good for one thing and one thing alone to the Fitzwilliam family— to be married to the colonel, to smooth over any scandal, and to prove the Fitzwilliam theory of there being One True Match for everyone ever (and the implicit subclause that these matches were supposed to be heterosexual).

“I think you would have me quit the Fitzwilliam family circle altogether, now I have served my purpose,” said Elizabeth, beginning to put it all together, “and go live forever after with my sister and her family, but my doing so will not make Darcy any more likely to marry Anne.”

“He does not look for a wife now because you have been accidentally fulfilling all the duties he would require of a wife,” snapped Lady Catherine.

Elizabeth blushed red as an infantry coat. “Lady Catherine!”

“I do not mean all,” she said, waving this away with her closed fan. “I do not accuse you of being that shameless; merely ignorant of what you ought to have done and what was proper to do. But in your ignorance, you have blundered. Darcy will never look for a wife when you are here.”

‘What if I do not wish him to look elsewhere for a wife?’ she nearly snapped. But it suddenly occurred to her— she didn’t. It was not just the idea of Darcy marrying Anne she found intolerable; it was Darcy marrying anyone but herself. She was not falling in love, as she thought earlier. She had fallen in love. Elizabeth squeezed her eyes shut; she could not catch her breath. When had this happened? Had it been coming on so gradually she simply had not noticed?

“I understand you undertook all the duties you did to prove that Darcy does not need his sister, and that he ought to let her marry. I know very well that part of the reason Miss Darcy is not married is that her brother does not wish her to be. You may have noticed that my sister’s son is not at all like my brother’s sons. Lord Stornoway and Colonel Fitzwilliam have and had their flaws, to be sure, but it was always easy for them to befriend all those about them. That was, oddly enough, their mother’s influence. A very religious woman, Christabel— she had to be, for her father was the Archbishop of London— but gracious and easy in company. But Darcy has not that talent; there are few people he considers his intimates and those he clings to rather tenaciously. Why else would he remain such close friends with the boy who fagged for him at Eton?”

“You refer to Mr. Bingley, madame?” Elizabeth could not keep the ice from her tone. “My sister’s husband, my niece's father, one of the most gentlemanlike, agreeable, generous, and good-natured men who ever lived? I really cannot imagine why Darcy would wish to maintain a friendship with such a person, unless it was by sheer force of habit.”

Lady Catherine was not one for nuance and nor for listening to any point that was not her own. “Precisely. A man who just purchased his house!”

“Lady Catherine,” said Elizabeth, “this is not a profitable conversation. I will quit it now.”

Lady Catherine condescended to explain, “I mean only that as Darcy is reserved, he ought to marry one of his few intimates, someone he has known since childhood.”

“But how well do Darcy and Anne truly know each other? Have they any similarities of taste or feeling? Have they any hobbies or habits in common? When was the last time they truly spoke to each other? Lady Catherine, you cannot be serious about this plan. It would be the ruin of happiness for both of them.”

Lady Catherine looked rather appalled that Elizabeth was so outspoken. “I see you have fallen far too much under the influence of Lady Stornoway. She, too, has a regrettable habit of insisting she knows the characters of the family she married into better than those who were born into it. There is something bordering in impertinence in your manner that is at times quite displeasing. I have often observed it, and wished to tell you of it, as a kind of hint as to how you ought to behave in the circles into which you married. But that is a matter for another day.”

The banked embers of Elizabeth’s temper began to flare. “Aunt Catherine, I think we have no more to say to each other. I realize you think you are acting in Mr. Darcy’s interests, trying to find him even a partial match, but—”

“A partial match?” asked Lady Catherine.

“—yes, but I think that is an over dogmatic approach to finding a spouse. Surely it would be better if he married someone whose wrist did not match his, if there was a commonality of taste, feeling, thought, and habit—”

“What do you mean a partial match?” demanded Lady Catherine. “Darcy surely never showed you his mark?”

“No,” she replied, and felt suddenly flustered. “I mean his— the only woman he appears to have thought of becoming engaged to was a— a Miss Elliot. Miss Anne Elliot. Who is now Mrs. Wentworth.”

“You are only proving my point,” said Lady Catherine. “You do not know the history of the family and blunder on in such ignorance that you reach the wildest conclusions. It was _not_ Miss Anne Elliot. Darcy never looked at her. It was the elder, Miss Elizabeth.”

Elizabeth had a sudden sensation of vertigo, as destabilizing as trying to find one's footing on a frigate during a tempest. But she had seen—

—she had seen only an ‘El’ on his wrist.

“When did you even meet Darcy, Mrs. Fitzwilliam?” asked Lady Catherine, with withering scorn. “I am convinced it was not until the spring of ‘12. You could not have observed his courtship of Miss Elliot. That was the year previous.”

“I met Darcy that same year,” said Elizabeth, feeling as if she was speaking from a great distance away. “The fall of 1811— he had come to Hertfordshire as part of a shooting party.”

‘But,’ she thought, ‘I have no children. Mr. Wickham specifically asked Darcy how he could bear to see his soulmate married to another, happy with another, bearing the child of another—’

But she had been pregnant with Colonel Fitzwilliam’s child at the time of Mr. Wickham’s threat— she had miscarried the next day. But how could Mr. Wickham have known? She had only told her aunt Gardiner—

—but had told her so in London, on the street, just before they had run into Mr. Wickham! It was not inconceivable he had overheard them— and Colonel Fitzwilliam had swerved so suddenly from issuing his challenge when Elizabeth had put a hand to her stomach—

‘Oh God,’ she thought.

Her mind was blank with shock.

Elizabeth was for some moments speechless, then she managed a very distant-sounding, “I—I have been very much mistaken— on more than I ever thought. Will you please give my excuses, Lady Catherine? I will... I will remain out here and think on all this.”

“That is the wisest thing you have ever said,” sniffed Lady Catherine and walked in.

Memories began to crowd in, replacing the blank panic of earlier: Darcy’s habit of staring at her in Hertfordshire and Kent, in the early days of their acquaintance; his insistence that she could not possibly be Colonel Fitzwilliam’s soulmate, that day at Huntsford; the declaration that incensed her more than the rest: “I was myself baptized Fitzwilliam Darcy. I may very well be your soulmate.”


	18. In which Elizabeth and Fitzwilliam have a much needed talk

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello all, and thank you for the wait! The final chapter turned out to be rather too long to be uploaded as one segment so I've split it in two. I shall have the very final bit up tomorrow or the day after, once I've finished tinkering with it. (Also thanks to eleith for stepping in for some impromptu beta work on this behemoth of an ending!)

Though Elizabeth felt as if she was in the midst of a very localized earthquake, the ball continued on. She heard the crowds migrating from ballroom to dining room.  Their voices were dim and indistinct; she could not pick out any individual voice among them. She remained on the raised terrace outside the ballroom.

Mechanically, Elizabeth unclasped the diamond bracelet at her left wrist and let it cascade into the palm of her right hand. She put it on the bannister of the terrace and peeled off her glove. ‘Fitzwilliam’ stood out, bold as ever, curling over the blue-green branches of veins at her wrist, like the iron gate before a garden. Every letter was familiar; she could recall with perfect clarity waking up at dawn when she turned sixteen, tearing at the button on the cuff of her night rail and thrusting her wrist at the still sleeping Jane, and exclaiming, “Jane, Jane, what does it say?” She had felt a creeping confusion take hold of her as Jane sleepily opened an eye and said, “Fitzwilliam, dearest.” Elizabeth had then felt a brief and rare flare of jealousy, that of course all would come easy to Jane and be odd and confusing for her, before being overwhelmed by doubt that Jane had read correctly— Elizabeth had then pushed her sleeve up to her elbow and stared at her wrist herself. It seemed impossible to her now that the ‘Fitzwilliam’ at her wrist should ever have been strange and unfamiliar, nothing more than a quote out of context. But then each loop and line had seemed so new, so fresh... she had traced each stroke with her eyes, so concerned with each part she had not taken in the whole.

Other memories overlaid this— putting on her first evening bracelet, a gift from her father, and feeling childishly worried that the ‘Fitzwilliam’ might rub off on the back of the inlaid enamel— her first ball, as she pressed the stones of her garnet bracelet against her gloved left wrist, trying to eavesdrop on every conversation in the hopes of hearing a ‘Fitzwilliam’ mentioned— baring her wrist to Charlotte, all those years ago at Huntsford, and first hearing of Colonel Fitzwilliam—

And from there she was overwhelmed with memories of her husband. Colonel Fitzwilliam kneeling in the dirt of the lane, hands shaking as he pulled off his glove to reveal the ‘Bennet’ on his wrist, and the reverence with which he’d touched the buttons of her glove before undoing it— the kiss he had pressed to her soulmark upon seeing it— his habit, first begun in the coach from Rosings to London, of sliding his fingertips against the edge of her soulmark, when they were in public, but he wanted her too badly to be still— baring their wrists before the altar, the gold braid at the end of Colonel Fitzwilliam’s sleeve winking at her, as if in reassurance, as if to say, ‘it still says Bennet; he is still your soulmate’— later that evening, resting her head on her husband’s bare chest, pressing, with a sort of self-conscious symbolism, her mark against the steady beating of his heart, as he stroked her loose hair, and they lay in the tumbled sheets of the marriage bed— how Colonel Fitzwilliam had woken her the next morning with a kiss and clasped a diamond bracelet (the very one she had just taken off) about her bare left wrist—

—and from there came the worse memories, of Colonel Fitzwilliam kissing her mark as he left for Hougoumont, with his final, hoarse, “Te amo, my dear Bennet,” and her own tremulous, “Te amo, my dear Fitzwilliam,” in response— running into the sickroom, grasping his left hand, feeling the pulse under her own name, the colonel’s pressing her hand, then, when his strength was gone, his fingers trailing over her mark—

Elizabeth furiously scrubbed her cheeks with the gloved palm of her right hand.

Darcy himself had said once that he feared, in showing someone a text of great meaning, that the other person would see all he had brought to it, not merely what was written—

And all the meaning she had attached to her mark, all the repercussions of the grandest choice she had made as a result of it— a choice she had been happy to make, a choice she had valued— did that now change? Did it mean less? Was it somehow a choice to be less proud of, because she had not known other choices existed?

Elizabeth recalled Honoria saying to her at Matlock the summer previous, “you cannot settle for yourself two contradictory notions: one, that soulmarks do not necessarily refer to the one person, ever, in the world, who will make you happy, and two, that if this is necessarily so, it means the person and relationship you are mourning was not what you thought it was. If the first is true, it does not necessarily mean the second is also true. Perhaps you chose to marry my brother based on a logical fallacy, but that does not lessen what you had.”

‘No,’ she thought determinedly, ‘this does not change that I was happily married to a man I loved and who loved me in return. I do not and cannot regret the years I was married to Colonel Fitzwilliam. Knowing Darcy bears my name on his wrist does not change that.’

Then, in a sort of wild and undirected fury, Elizabeth thought, ‘In fact, it changes nothing!’

The absurdity of this was too much even for her— it changed everything— nearly everything— so much of her life and her understanding of it and of herself—

This was too distressing; she shifted her gaze up to her wedding ring, worn and scratched from years of continuous wear, of scrabbling campaigns, of stillroom mishaps. Since Colonel Fitzwilliam had first slid it on her finger, Elizabeth had taken it off only to clean it; and she had not done so since the Battle of Waterloo.

She felt that she could not make sense of anything— and yet, everything that she had not understood about Darcy was beginning to become comprehensible— other memories began to crowd in, ones she had not thought to include in the narrative she had constructed and unconsciously carried about with her, attached to her mark—

There came an “Elizabeth?” from inside the ballroom. 

It was Georgiana— Elizabeth knew this because the very familiar voice of Kitty called out a, “Lizzy, where are you?” in echo— but the sound of her Christian name sent a jolt through her, just like the time she had gone to a salon in Paris, where, when everyone joined hands, the hostess touched an electric eel and its current passed through them all. Just like then, her first instinct was to jump back; she knocked her bracelet off the balustrade.

Of course! It was of a piece with the rest of the evening. Elizabeth grabbed her glove and stalked down the steps, and began hunting in the gravel for it. She was almost relieved to have something to do, and was disappointed with how easily she found the bracelet. The perturbation of her mind was still very great; she felt almost concussed with the weight of such a realization, and could not yet think through the shock to see more than the vaguest outlines of all she now knew.

Elizabeth pulled on her glove and fussed with the clasp of her bracelet as she scanned the deserted terrace with all its flickering Chinese lanterns. The light shone softly through the colored rice paper. She did not wish to be seen— the gradiated darkness of the garden beyond called to her, the shadows of the hedges seemed like outspread arms waiting to embrace her; she plunged into these. Elizabeth wished she had not let Kitty and Georgiana talk her into wearing white— not only so that she would be less easily spotted slipping away from the ball, but because she wanted the comfort of mourning, the outer confirmation of the narrative Elizabeth had spent most of her life constructing and maintaining, the one her society and her in-laws particularly had insisted she shape—

But no, that was overly-simplistic. Honoria had first brought up the idea that it was nonsense to think a person could only find romantic love once, with one person, and before that Marjorie had pointed out that the Fitzwilliam notion of soulmarks was nonsensical, even in its seemingly perfect incarnation: the marriage of Earl Spencer’s eldest daughter, Lady Marjorie Spencer, to the Earl of Matlock’s eldest son, Julian Fitzwilliam, the Viscount Stornoway. Though Marjorie had seemed to appreciate Stornoway more after the whole  _ Glenarvon  _ debacle, she still would have laughed until she cried if anyone told her that she was put on earth specifically to marry Lord Stornoway. It was so limiting a narrative.

Elizabeth recalled all the moments in which she had revealed her mark to friends, intentionally or not, as a marker of intimacy— Jane at dawn on her sixteenth birthday, and her parents and other sisters during breakfast; the Gardiners that Christmas; Charlotte at Hunsford, during Elizabeth’s first visit to Kent; Mrs. Kirke and Colonel Dunne while assisting in the medical tents after Salamanca; Mary Crawford, after a costume ball, when they'd both had too much to drink; Wellington after Waterloo, when he had promised to break with propriety and escort her to Colonel Fitzwilliam’s funeral; Marjorie on the beach on the edge of the Matlock estate; Honoria and Georgiana in her room, the day after; Colonel Pascal in London— and people seldom mentioned showing their marks to their friends, when they talked of revealing their marks. Or at least, she never talked of revealing her mark to friends, or even thought of it. It occurred to Elizabeth that even the powder wagon incident, one of her favorite stories to tell about herself, never came consciously to her mind when she thought of her mark. And yet her mark had been the lynchpin of her success. The attacking French officers had seen her expensive clothes and seen her mark and heard her accent and assumed certain things about her— that she was a British lady who believed that the name on one's wrist was one’s Perfectly Godly Match—

Elizabeth became conscious of the fact that her thin dancing slippers had not been designed for such outdoor activity. They had been soaked through from the evening dew. She hesitated and looked about herself. She had been in this part of the hedge before, surely— it was only the new context that made it seem unfamiliar and frightening.

Closing her eyes did a certain amount of good but only a certain amount. It felt impossible to get her bearings when she was this turned about. For one tremulous moment she thought herself lost. But how could she truly be lost at Pemberley? And, Elizabeth thought, with a spurt of inappropriate humor, as Anne de Bourgh had pointed out, Pemberley  _ had  _ once been a hunting lodge, in the era of some Henry or other. The land was still mostly wood and parklands, and the formal gardens were not so very extensive as all that.

A couple of turns, chosen at random, let her into dead ends; she backtracked, feeling foolish, and eventually came across the fountain at the heart of the shrubbery.

This was good enough. Her shoes were now very wet and it was unpleasant to walk. Elizabeth sat on the ledge of the fountain and looked up at Pemberley. Its windows blazed with light above the tops of the hedges. She folded her arms and tucked her hands under her armpits so that she wouldn’t be tempted to stare at her soulmark.

It was about then she realized she’d lost her bracelet again.

Elizabeth swore like a gunner whose canon had gotten bogged down in a muddy retreat back to Portugal, but she wasn’t ready to head back. How could she face anyone, let alone Darcy? What could she say? What  _ would  _ she say? 

“Hello Darcy, I finally understand why you behaved so strangely to me when we first knew each other— you’ve been in love with me nearly the whole of our acquaintance and I  _ did not realize it until ten minutes ago _ !”

No, that would never do. Too panicked, too disjointed, and frankly absurd to boot. Well, first drafts were always terrible. She tried again:

“Forgive my absence, but I just realized I was the soulmate who married someone else who has been making you miserable these five years or so. I hope it will not be a problem that I am living in your house.”

That was worse. Perhaps a description of the evening so far:

“I beg pardon for being late to supper, but I realized I was in love with you and then realized we were possibly a match within the space of one conversation with  _ Lady Catherine.  _ I have no idea how to reconcile these two pieces of information with all I have previously thought about my life. Do you have any advice? Oh yes, and please do pass the roast chicken.”

Yes, and why not reveal it all to the neighborhood! Darcy would love that. Clearly she’d have to get him alone. Elizabeth tried again:

“Mr. Darcy, you will never guess where I have been and what I have been thinking! Indeed, I apparently cannot guess at any of your emotions, for I did not even consider we might be a match until this evening, and I do not know how to understand that, given the fact that I was happily married to a man I believed to be my match for three years. In my defense, you gave me absolutely no hints as towards your true feelings to me, or ever spoke of your love—”

Though there she stopped and groaned and put her head in her gloved hands. He had told her, in a manner of speaking, but in such a way she had immediately discounted it. For God’s sake! How could she have been expected to realize he had thought they were a match by him angrily telling her his first name in the middle of an argument? Had Darcy ever tried to flirt with her, or hint at his mark before that point? And conventional wisdom held that one recognized (or at least suspected) one’s soulmate upon a first meeting— and when they had first met, Darcy had considered her tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt him, and she had thought him proud and disagreeable.

And all the things he had said to her, about her birth, her breeding, her background— all the reasons he had listed as ones that meant she could not be the match to a man of Colonel Fitzwilliam’s standing— oh God, were they the reasons he had not spoken or flirted with her then? Socially speaking, they had not been much of a match— indeed, Elizabeth often, privately thought the only reason some of her in-laws had welcomed her as they did was because their only requirement for Colonel Fitzwilliam’s match was that she be a gentle _ woman.  _ For Darcy, with presumably an ‘Elizabeth’ on his wrist, an acceptable female name, of course they were going to have higher standards. Of course Darcy would have absorbed these— and of course Darcy was going to be skittish as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs at the idea of being a match with someone his family would not like. 

Elizabeth pushed her curls away from her temples and thought, ‘And this all came after he danced attendance on Miss Elliot the Ineligible, and then after Wickham tried to elope with Georgiana— of course he would be overly wary about finding a match. He had been wrong before, and had seen how the system failed. And he would never have said anything to me after I made it clear I was in love with his cousin instead. Richard and I  _ were  _ a match; I shall not be convinced out of that— but if Darcy and I are also a match—’ 

There were some daisies growing about the base of the fountain. Elizabeth absently tore some up and then  plucked the petals, just to have some kind of an outlet for the nervous energy fluttering through her, and tossed them one by one into the basin of the fountain. Unbidden, the childish rhyme came to her: ‘he loves me, he loves me not, he loves me—’

The exercise was unsuitable on several fronts. She sought no glimmer of the future, but clarification of the past; nor did she particularly believe in augury or any other kind of fortune telling. The future was not set; it was the result of past and present choices. But her choices— she did not repine of her choices— how could she, when she had not even known there were other choices she could have made?

Elizabeth tore the last petal to shreds. She squeezed her eyes shut and against a sudden rush of tears. All she had known, or thought she had known, had been overturned in a moment. The judgement she had so highly prized, the quick mind she had so valued, had caused her to go leaping merrily off a cliff. Darcy, in love with Elizabeth Elliot! How could she have ever thought so? She contented herself with the knowledge that she had not been too far off the mark— Darcy had still been trying to force a match based off his soulmark and his understanding of what his social equal must be— but how terribly wrong she had been! Elizabeth had always prided herself on being witty and clever— how had she missed that Darcy bore her own name on her wrist? How had she so failed to understand—

Elizabeth flung her handful of petal pieces at the surface of the water, and forced herself to open her eyes. Her reflection stared back at her, murky and unclear; with a darker, dimmer shape beyond. She blinked, surreptitiously wiped away a tear, and the shape gained familiarity and clarity. Darcy was coming up behind her.

She whirled about and said, stupidly, “Darcy! I thought I had hidden away very effectively— how on earth did you find me?”

Darcy held up her diamond bracelet. It dangled down from his gloved hand, sparkling dimly against the darkness as if he had caught up the Milky Way. Elizabeth was abruptly reminded of Cinderella, her bracelet flying off as she waved goodbye to the prince, as she fled the ball— but French fairy tales reminded her of Colonel Fitzwilliam— her husband, the person she had declared to all the world as her soulmate—

She turned away and viciously threw the stem of her daisy into the fountain. The reflection of herself and Mr. Darcy shivered away into incoherence.

“I take it,” said Darcy, “that your interview with Lady Catherine was unpleasant.”

“However did you guess?”

“What did she say to you?”

“Nonsense,” she replied, “but nonsense with a grain of truth. It might irritate me enough to turn it into a pearl of wisdom. We shall have to wait and see.”

Elizabeth could already tell that she was not striking the right tone; her voice was too sharp, her posture too defensive, and she could not bring herself to look at Darcy.

Darcy sat down beside her and awkwardly gestured with the bracelet, as if to offer to help her put it back on, but the last thing Elizabeth wanted was to hold out her left wrist to him— she had a momentary, absurd thought, that she would prefer to gnaw off her left wrist, as some animals did, when caught in traps— and so instead she hugged her elbows to her chest and turned entirely away from him. Darcy cleared his throat and stuck the bracelet in the pocket of his coat.

The silence between them, which was usually comfortable, was tense. It became more so by the second.

“Is there—” Darcy began; then hesitated, as Elizabeth looked determinedly away “— is there anything I can do for your present relief? I am not sure I have ever seen you like this before.”

“I have never felt like this before, in all honesty,” said Elizabeth. “Usually I find it extremely easy to talk of all I think and feel, but I cannot even begin—”

Oh for God’s sake— she was beginning to tear up again.

“What did she say to you?” Darcy asked, in the commanding tones he generally used when having to act as Master of Pemberley.

It may have worked on everyone else, but it wasn’t going to work on Elizabeth; indeed, it made her less inclined to obey and the pettishness and irritations felt quite dried her tears. “Darcy, it really was not much worse than what her daughter said. Neither member of the Rosings family has a high opinion of the rest of us— I wish I could laugh carelessly and say, ‘what is that to me?’ as I used to do, but ever since the colonel died, I cannot keep my temper with Lady Catherine. Be glad I had no pottery of yours to smash, as I did at Matlock. I merely decapitated some of your daisies.”

Darcy said, “Be that as it may, I will not stand idly by when you are insulted, any more than you would while I am.”

“Stop being so good,” demanded Elizabeth, and tried to make it teasing; but it came out rather exasperated. “I can hold my own, Darcy. And it’s not— it’s hardly— I do not—” she hardly knew what she was saying, tossed out half-phrases, meaninglessly, trying to fill up the chasm of silence, but what could be said? What phrase could bridge the sudden distance between them— could possibly get Elizabeth over the shock, embarrassment, and panic of knowing all Darcy had spent years concealing? She steered her mind towards less dangerous subjects, hoping Darcy might be fobbed off with: “Lady Catherine was only more honest than she usually is, in detailing most exactly what my position is within the family— or what she thinks it is. I am the solution to a problem that no longer exists and I have therefore outlived my utility. Anne’s opinion of me was worse, though her opinion of me was roughly equal with her opinion of Marjorie. I suppose I ought to be flattered, held on the same, low plane as the daughter of Earl Spencer.”  

Darcy was for a moment speechless; Elizabeth glanced at the surface of the water and saw that he was pale and struggling with himself. She saw the strain and anger in his expression and knew how little he liked how to speak when in the grip of strong emotion— or perhaps, how little able he was to speak in such circumstances— and was glad to wait until he regained his composure, or at least the appearance of it. 

“Anyone who observed you and Richard together knew it was a true match,” said Darcy, in a tone of forced calm. “How Lady Catherine could have decided that your marriage was simply a  _ solution to a problem— _ ”

“Everyone?” asked Elizabeth, incredulous. “Darcy, do not tell me  _ you  _ honestly believed Richard and I were a true match.” Before he could guess that she had guessed she hastily pressed on, “I know it was a very long time ago, but when you found out Richard thought we might be a match, you came over to Huntsford and laid out all the reasons we were not—”

“I was wrong,” said Darcy. “On more fronts than one.”

“On others you were quite right,” said Elizabeth, unwillingly.

“If you refer to Mr. Wickham—”

“He misrepresented you to me so thoroughly,” said Elizabeth, just realizing the true extent of it. “Oh god, Darcy— however could I have believed him? I am so ashamed of what I thought of you— of what I believed—” A wave of mortification threatened to drown her. “Oh, what I believed! Darcy, I don't know how you could ever forgive me, let alone think well of me.”

Though she could not entirely raise her eyes to him, she could tell he was looking at her with sympathy and concern; she saw him out of the corner of her eye and by his reflection in the still water, littered with daisy petals. They were fragile little barques, poised so delicately on the surface of the water. One good jostle and they might be sunk forever.

“Darcy,” she said impulsively, “do you really believe we have it right in England, that there’s only one match for you, ever, in the world, and you are doomed to unhappiness forever if you do not find it?”

“Not exactly,” Darcy said, cautiously. “I think our national philosophy does not leave enough space for the individual and the choices we make. Of all those who match the names on our wrists, we have to choose whom is most likely to be compatible with us, and pursue further acquaintance. If the other person does not agree that you are a match, then—”

“Then?” asked Elizabeth, her voice strained.

“Then,” said Darcy, looking at her oddly, “you realize that putting such an emphasis on one person as the source of all happiness is a limiting narrative that does not reflect the reality of the world. For even those that are a perfect match have friends and family, and generally are happy to have them, and draw happiness from interacting with them.” After a moment he asked, “Is it something you believe, Elizabeth?”

The sound of her Christian name on his lips struck her with painful force, like an arrow from a longbow, and lodged just under her breastbone. 

“I did,” said Elizabeth, in some confusion. “I do— but it— I don’t think… that is, I do not doubt that Colonel Fitzwilliam and I were a match, but I do not think we were match simply because our wrists happened to have the last names of the other. We were compatible in terms of personality— character, tastes, preferences, values— I told my father, after he met Colonel Fitzwilliam for the first time, that I viewed our wrists matching more as a bridge over the chasm of rank between our two families than anything else.”

“Is that how you still view it?”

“I… I do view it as a matter of choice yes, and our wrists were convenient excuses against the obstacles of unequal rank and fortune, circumstances that mattered because they did to his family, not because they really mattered to him or to me.”

“ _ Your family _ , too,” said Darcy. “You are a Fitzwilliam as much as I am; nothing Lady Catherine can say will change that, when all the rest of us hold you as one of our own.”

Why on earth did Darcy have to be everything good and kind? Despite her own shock and confusion, she recalled again that she loved him and why she loved him— and this was why. For all the cool formality with which he ordinarily spoke, there was real feeling behind it. He was a good, kind man at heart, and for those he truly loved he would do anything. 

After a moment he asked, “But you cannot tell me your being a match with Richard bore no weight at all on your choice to marry.”

“Would I have chosen him despite my mark, you mean? I don't— I suppose if I had been born into a different society, but— oh! I know you, I know you will argue for the individual over the general, but when the individual is shaped by the general, by society, and must take part in society, then how can one make a neat separation between the two? I was twenty, I had never been in love before, and everything aligned as I had always been told it would by my mother, by my neighbors, by books, songs, stories, poems, plays.... Good God, I was even skeptical of the English take on soulmarks. I had daily proof in my parents, at the folly of such a system, but it worked for  _ me  _ so why should I think critically of it? By adhering to ideas I had been brought up to believe were right, I was the gainer— and I have put myself through more difficult mental contortions to keep hold of a first impression of something or someone.” All the worst of these were centered about Darcy. She felt compelled to explain, at least in part, “And it was Richard; he had the same... or at least a very similar way of interacting with the world. Courtesy was to him, as it is to me, the highest virtue. It was not just easy, but right, to try and enter into the concerns and feelings of everyone around us.” Then, fearing she had offended Darcy thereby, for he had little skill in matching the spirits of those about him, unless he had known them for a long time, she added, “But I suppose I shew myself as very superficial in this. I did not have to work at understanding Richard, since we had similar ways of interacting with the world, and I held myself to be clever when it was sheer luck. All was easy with him. I do not think that makes is greater or lesser than a relationship I had to work at, it just makes it… different. And I have spent the past year wrestling with the idea that even knowing all that, even happy as I was— he was not my only chance at happiness. I do not wish to be alone forever. I came to the conclusion that I could perhaps be happy—indeed very happy—loving someone not my match, as long as that person was someone I esteemed and respected, whose friendship I valued, with whom I might be compatible, but….”

There was silence again between them, but the tension was not out of awkwardness, but out of the knowledge that they were now approaching a conversation they both knew they must have, but had spent some time avoiding. 

Elizabeth said, in a low, strained voice, “Darcy, I have never been so confused in my life as I am this evening.”

Darcy somewhat automatically tried to take her into his arms, but Elizabeth panicked; and in the middle of this, there were noises in the gardens and sudden calls of “Mrs. Fitzwilliam!” and “Mr. Darcy!” Elizabeth overset herself, and fell into the fountain.

“Elizabeth!” exclaimed Darcy. 

Elizabeth replied with a stream of profanity of which she was not proud, but which were words enough to adequately convey her feelings for everything that had happened that evening. Darcy was deeply embarrassed. This fortunately caused him to freeze in place for long enough that Elizabeth could find her footing and wave away his attempts to be of use. She braced her hands on the edge of the stone ledge and awkwardly hauled herself out. She felt like a landed trout when she emerged, and lay in a sodden heap of silk, as several servants came up and immediately began apologizing for so startling her that she had fallen into the fountain. But really, it was very necessary to find them; the mine at Barmote had exploded earlier that evening. A messenger had just come with the news. All the guests who lived in or near Barmote were already preparing to depart, and Colonels Dunne and Pascal had asked to see the housekeeper, for linens to take as bandages. 

Darcy settled his evening coat about Elizabeth’s shoulders and said, “Yes, thank you for coming to find me; let us go through the servants’ quarters, and supply the doctors with what they need.”

Elizabeth spotted Colonel Dunne inspecting a couple of barrels of vinegar in the kitchen and unthinkingly and immediately asked him what she could best do to assist him. 

Colonel Dunne looked askance at her— bedraggled, wet hair losing its curl (one tendril was plastered against her cheek), diamond necklace askew, her obviously soaking wet gown, the skirt and petticoat clinging trippingly to her legs, Darcy’s evening coat draped over the whole, the sleeves of which quite swallowed her hands and hung down to her knees— and decided there wasn't time to ask questions. “Might I look about the stillroom?”

“Of course, I shall take you there myself—”

“Elizabeth, do you really think—” Darcy began.  

“This way,” said Elizabeth, shaking out her sodden skirts and rushing onto the stillroom. She knew almost better than Mrs. Reynolds where everything was kept, and rushed about, moving chairs about and clambering up on them for various poultices and ingredients for draughts. Within about ten minutes Colonel Dunne had his arms full and rushed out, calling over his shoulder, “And if you have any lavender, Mrs. Fitzwilliam, I would be greatly obliged, for I think there must be a number of burns—”

Elizabeth turned frowningly about the stillroom, trying to recall where the last of the lavender was; it was still too early for her to have harvested any from Pemberley’s gardens herself. Darcy had been quickly and efficiently organizing staff during this, and Elizabeth fancied he had briefly gone upstairs to attend to his guests as well, for she heard his familiar step on the staircase that led from the main part of the house to the still room. She checked the impulse to turn towards him. Elizabeth felt a little less unsettled to have something familiar and useful to do in the face of a crisis, but she dared not meet his eyes; her composure was a brittle, fragile thing, that would break very easily.

“Elizabeth,” said Darcy, much astonished. “I thought your maid would have come to you by now. What are you doing?”

“Looking for lavender,” said Elizabeth, opening up a cabinet. “Colonel Dunne needs it.”

“As of course the apothecary at Barmote has no supplies, and the Lambton Hospital opened without anything in it.”

“There is a crisis, there are people injured, Colonel Dunne has asked me to do something,” said Elizabeth, emerging with a jar of dried lavender buds. “It is habit—”

“You are not on campaign,” said Darcy, taking the jar from her and signaling to a servant. “You are not abroad and you are not without servants. Let one of them get Colonel Dunne what he requires. You are soaked through. No one expects you to ferry medicines in this state.” He himself had acquired a second evening coat while Elizabeth had been rushing about the stillroom.

“It is what was often expected of Mrs. Fitzwilliam,” she said, frustrated. She tried to push her wet and dripping hair from her face and slapped herself in the face with the sleeve of Darcy’s coat instead. “And I very much miss being Mrs. Fitzwilliam.”

Darcy looked at her in exasperation tinged with affection. “And have you been pretending to be someone else all evening, or have I been misidentifying you for far longer?”

“I have been the Widow Fitzwilliam this year and more,” she replied, “a weak creature who bursts into tears at the slightest provocation, who— who panics at the scent of smoke, who is perfectly  _ useless  _ and gets everything wrong—”

Darcy caught her by the shoulders, and said, in alarm and concern, “Elizabeth, did Lady Catherine tell you all this? That is so false a portrait of you, I do not recognize you in it.”

Elizabeth made an impotent, futile gesture to break free, but his grip tightened. 

“You are and always have been to me  _ Elizabeth _ .”

It fell into the silence, like an organ note echoing in an empty cathedral, suddenly swelling and filling up the space.

Elizabeth burst into tears.

She had spent all evening realizing that there had been reasons beside propriety and Darcy's formal manners that kept her from ever thinking of him by his first name, or addressing him as such but she had not much thought as to why Darcy had always addressed her so insistently as Mrs. Fitzwilliam. She had always liked the way he said her name, the particular inflections he always used when saying ‘Elizabeth,’ but had attributed her pleasure to vanity. It was a testament to her powers of pleasing that she induced so formal a man as Mr. Darcy, a man whom she had assumed disliked her intensely from the first, and had to be carefully charmed into accepting her as part of the family, into addressing her consistently by her first name. Any strangeness in tone she attributed to his struggling with his own reserve because he knew her pleasure in hearing her Christian name on his lips was worth any discomfort on his own part. But oh— what discomfort!

“How can you be so good,” she wept. “Don’t,” she said, when he pulled her to him and wrapped his arms about her shoulders, “I shall get your clothes wet.”

“If that is your only objection, that is nothing to me.”

It was at that point that the door slammed shut on them.

“It seems our sisters are about to take their revenge on Lady Catherine,” said Darcy.

“What?  _ No _ !” She had put her head against his chest, trying to muffle the noise of her crying and now looked up and over at the door. 

“Elizabeth,” he said, in some exasperation, still holding tightly to her, “Lady Catherine reduced you to tears. Whatever guerilla offensive our sisters and the servants have launched against her is more than deserved.”

“She did not,” Elizabeth protested. “I told you, I cry at everything these days.” But this sounded unconvincing to her own ear. She struggled a little and Darcy released her; she ran to the door and tried the handle— of course it was locked, it usually was— and pounded on it with a fist. “Kitty! Georgiana! Mrs. Reynolds! Hello! Is there anyone there?”

The only response received, a high whine of distress, was one that baffled her. 

“Boatswain,” said Darcy, which clarified matters. “I must not have locked my door when I went up. Boatswain!”

Boatswain gave a loud, low, ‘roff!’ of joy. He had found his master! That Darcy was behind a door and not before him, where Boatswain might drool upon him at leisure, was a subsequent, depressing realization for the poor Newfoundland, who pawed at the door in some perplexity.

“Fetch Georgiana!” 

Boatswain, though a loving dog, was not particularly intelligent. He continued to paw at the door. 

“Georgiana is not likely to let us out,” Elizabeth said and tried, “Boatswain fetch—fetch help?”

“He barely knows the names of you, Georgiana, and Kitty,” said Darcy. “His own is the only one he reliably recognizes. A complex abstract concept like ‘help’ is right out. Occasionally he forgets the word ‘ball.’”

This, however, was not one of those times. Boatswain had heard people talking about balls all evening. And he had heard ‘Fetch,’ four times, which was about the average number of times it took Boatswain to realize he was supposed to be obeying any command more complicated that ‘sit’ and ‘heel.’ There was the sound of nails scrabbling on the stone floors, then the syncopated thudding of Boatswain heaving his not inconsiderable bulk full speed down the corridor. 

Elizabeth slammed her fist on the door and remembered at the last minute to swear in Spanish instead of English. She turned next to the bolts of the door, which she and Darcy had been able to pull out before, but the servants had apparently been mortified that the hinges on the stillroom door were so flimsy and strengthened them when they had replaced the rods of the hinges. “No!” She hit the door with the palm of her open hand, resulting in a damp squelching noise. 

“We are usually released within the hour,” said Darcy, studying her with worry. “You have not minded these confused attempts at initiative before.”

“No,” said Elizabeth, rolling up the sleeves of her borrowed coat and stripping off her gloves. She scrubbed furiously at her cheeks with her damp hands, then wiped them on the coat. 

“Elizabeth,” said Darcy, “I beg you will tell me what has overset you, if it is not Lady Catherine.” Then, with shock, “Is it because you think she is right?”

“No,” said Elizabeth, trying for composure. “It— oh Darcy, I hardly know what to say or do. It is because I have been so wrong about so many things that I do not understand how to get on. I do not understand myself at present— a difficult and unhappy state of affairs for I must live with myself as long as I live. I hardly understand my past at present, which is just temporally unsound.” 

Darcy quietly presented her with a fresh handkerchief. She buried her face in in it, feeling suddenly overwhelmed. Speech came pouring out. “Darcy I— what can I say? What can be said? All I know is that I have so terribly misjudged you and caused you more pain than I can easily admit, and you persist in being so damnably  _ kind  _ that I feel the worst kind of wretch.”

“What?” asked Darcy, in some perplexity.

Elizabeth did not know how it could be any longer avoided. She gathered her courage about her and lowered the handkerchief. It felt harder to step back and look up at his handsome face than it had to walk through Hougoumont. “I cannot escape this conversation, it seems.” Oh God, all the cool emptiness of the night sky and all the grounds of Pemberley had not seemed large enough for such a conversation; how could the stillroom be? Even full as it was with drying flowers hanging from wooden frames, filling the air with perfume, it seemed but a memory of their true scent. It seemed too confined a space. Elizabeth tried to think of a pun on the still room and distilling things into a more concentrated form, hoping a joke might relieve her feelings, but she was too distraught for even that. 

Darcy looked at her without understanding. 

With a brittle gaiety, too sharp-edged, sharp enough that it made her voice break and catch in odd places, Elizabeth confessed, “I am not a skilled mathematician, Darcy; I have been making the most horrific errors of addition and subtraction— all my guesses and estimates have been wildly off. The problem currently causing me grief is one of time, you see. I had it from Georgiana that the same year you gave up on Miss Elizabeth Elliot you thought you had met your soulmate, a woman who, the year following, according to Mr. Wickham, was married with children. Or with child, rather. I assumed everyone was talking about Anne Elliot Wentworth. Lady Catherine merely set my timeline straight.”

Understanding began to dawn. 

Darcy said, stiltedly, when it became clear Elizabeth did not know how to go on, “I had been wondering, for some time now, if when I confessed I had long admired you, our definitions of ‘long’ were the same.”

“I thought you meant since January,” said Elizabeth. “Mary Crawford told me you had liked me since January.”

“And Mary Crawford is such an expert on my character.”

Elizabeth threw her hands up in the air. “I had no idea you  _ meant it _ when you told me at Hunsford you might be my soulmate! I thought you hated me up until Jane’s wedding!”

Darcy stared at her incredulously. 

“You cannot blame me,” said Elizabeth, peevish and snifflng a little, still. “The only time you  _ did  _ come out and say you thought we were soulmates, it was right after you listed all the reasons you thought we couldn’t be— reasons I thought you meant precluded me from being  _ Richard’s  _ match. After all, you began your speech saying you did not believe him when he told you he thought I was  _ his  _ match. And all the time we had known each other before, all you would do was argue with me and stare at me to find fault. I realize you were trying to convince yourself I was not your match, but—”

“You thought I stared at you to find fault?” Darcy asked, much astonished 

“Yes! The first time you looked at me you said I was not handsome enough to tempt you into dancing.”

Darcy had entirely forgotten this, if one judged by his expression, and the baffled way in which he was now staring at her. “Elizabeth, it has been many years now since I thought you the handsomest woman of my acquaintance. I cannot recall the look or the hour when I found it to be so, any more than I can recall the instant I became convinced we were….”

Elizabeth found composure and strength enough to look him straight in the eye and say, in a voice a little low and rough from crying, but a voice that did not tremble, “We were— we might be a match.”

Darcy looked at her with a sort of helpless tenderness and corrected, “That we are a match.” He said it quietly enough that she could pretend she had not heard him, if she wished. 

She found herself saying, confusedly, “But you did not think so at first.”

“I did not want to think so,” he admitted, looking ashamed. 

Elizabeth managed a brittle, rather defensive laugh. “I suppose after Elizabeth Elliot, the notion of any Elizabeth made you kick out like an ass.”

She had meant it in all senses of the word and Darcy winced in acknowledgement of this. “It does not excuse how I acted to you, I admit that; nor could you have ever known my feelings when I went to speak with you at Huntsford. I assumed that you would be….”

“A fortune hunter?”

“Never that,” said Darcy, aghast, “but if our wrists matched— with all I could materially offer you— it was wrong of me, I know. I did not know you then as I do now. Those considerations are not of primary importance to you.”

“No.”

“What mattered to you— and what still matters to you— is what I ought to have understood from the first about what a true match is and ought to be. It is not, as my segment of society has it, two perfect equals in terms of any material standard. What is of critical importance are similarities of mind, taste, and feeling. I saw that in my own parents. Indeed, I was given good principles by their example, but left to follow them in pride and conceit, and a certain rigidity that cannot—that ought not to be deployed—was the result. I had not been brought up to look beyond the family circle, and when I did look to the rest of the world, to look at it thinking myself automatically better than it, by virtue of being Fitzwilliam Darcy of Pemberley. I do not know when I began to value my system of thought so highly, or the point when I began to value received ideas more than people, in all their individual complexities, but it was a point on which I badly wanted and needed correction. Whatever pain there was in the adjustment of my ideas was a necessary one. It is the marriage of true minds one ought to pursue, one ought to look for. I did not… and….”

“And I was married,” said Elizabeth. She had listened to this with a feeling of astonishment not unmixed with a host of conflicting emotions: gratification, pity, sorrow, and something very like joy. His love, and how nobly he had concealed it, touched her deeply. How could she have caused such passion, in such a man, and never know of it?

“And you were married to someone who had known that,” said Darcy. “Richard joked to me once that when a heart breaks, it breaks open. He was someone made compassionate by disappointment. I can only hope I have followed his example in that.”

“I never meant to cause you such pain.”

“It was pain I caused myself,” said Darcy, not quite able to remain still, though every learnt habit seemed to be insisting he display his customary self-command. When speaking he paced; he went to the window nearest the door to try and open it; he absently snapped off a sprig of rosemary and caused its spicy scent to waft through the room; he looked at her as she imagined St. Sebastian might look, pinned bravely defiant to a tree, waiting for the club-blow that would finish him. “Elizabeth, I have kept this from you because it was a problem I caused myself. You can in no way be blamed for feelings you certainly never invited—and feelings which may be to you unwelcome. If I could have kept them from you forever I would have done—”

“And….” Elizabeth asked, forcing the words out, “do you think that precludes our being a match? For I confess, I am having trouble reconciling the two—especially since I only realized earlier this evening I had fallen in love with you.”

Darcy had been fussing with some piece of equipment left on a counter; he turned sharply to look at her. His look of heartfelt delight so well became him, Elizabeth could have lost her heart to him then, had it not been his already. “Elizabeth,” he said, voice shaking, though the left hand he extended to her, to lay his fingertips so lightly, so delicately against her cheek, was steady, “you love me?”

She closed her eyes, in a vain attempt to try and stave off her tears. “Terribly so, Fitzwilliam.”

“Perhaps then,” he said, with a shaking laugh, more indicative of incredulity than amusement, “I might return the lesson you taught me. There is more in heaven and earth than dreamt of in any philosophy.” He bent then to kiss her.

It was like the first breath of air after having been submerged too long; she felt as if she had at last broken through the surface of the water to fill her lungs again. Elizabeth felt ridiculous, crying and laughing at once, still dripping wet under his best evening coat, kissing and being kissed, but so relieved, so happy—

“Oh Darcy,” she said, putting her arms around his neck. “ _ Fitzwilliam _ , my love—”

“Dearest, loveliest  _ Elizabeth _ ,” he said, and kissed her after every word, his voice somehow both rough and tender. He drew back and seemed to trace her features with his loving gaze and said, “I have loved you so long without hope—” Then, looking a little awkward “—and without expectation of return. Do not feel obliged because I—”

“Do you really think I would tell you I love you out of obligation?” she exclaimed, wishing to tease. “Fitzwilliam Darcy, you ridiculous man, I love you for all that you are, with all that I am— the least of which is this.” She held up her bare left wrist. 

The happiness which this reply produced was such as he had probably never felt before; and he expressed himself on the occasion as sensibly and as warmly as a man violently in love can be supposed to do. Somehow he managed to pull back his sleeve to reveal the ‘Elizabeth’ she was not at all surprised to see there; and following this, stumbled through a proposal quite so incoherent and so often interrupted with kisses, Elizabeth had to put her hands over his mouth and say, laughingly, “I take it, sir, now we have at last managed to get through the normal forms of courtship, you are greatly desirous of our being married?”

He kissed her fingertips until she moved them and said, “There is no greater wish in my heart.”

“Nor in mine! How marvelously convenient.” 

His arms were tight about her waist, wonderfully so, the heat of his body delightful through her damp and now rather chilly gown— she knew she was probably dripping all over his knee-breeches and waistcoat but could not bring herself to care. Any moment she was not holding Darcy, at that particular point in time, was a moment wasted. Love thrilled through her with exquisite intensity.

They kissed and kissed again, in reassurance and affirmation— and affection above all. Darcy still had the habit of kissing her as if she was something precious, to be treasured and lingeringly enjoyed, but with a very little persuasion he could be provoked to the heights of passion she herself was at— and Elizabeth was rather certain they would have anticipated their vows if they had not heard Boatswain barking and the Pattinsons asking each other where on earth Mr. Darcy and Mrs. Fitzwilliam had got to.

“We had better stop,” said Elizabeth, reluctantly. She was still crying a little, but now from happiness and relief. Darcy reached for his handkerchief, realized that Elizabeth still had on his coat and that the coat was soaked through, and somewhat awkwardly and very ineffectively blotted at her wet cheek with his shirt cuff.

Elizabeth laughed away the last of her tears. “Ridiculous man!”

“Fond as I am of so unique an endearment, I hope you will call me Fitzwilliam occasionally,” he replied, smiling. 

“Only if you call me Elizabeth—” then feeling conscious of what pain doing so must have given him for so many years, she put her fingers over his left wrist and stroked the bare skin there as if to smooth away an old injury.

A swift intake of breath. Darcy closed his eyes and leaned forward, unthinkingly so, or so it seemed, with a hoarse, “How easily you undo me, Elizabeth.”

They had managed to break apart and look a little less disreputable by the time the Pattinsons opened the door, and Elizabeth spoke very spiritedly of having been so startled by the servants coming in search of them, she’d fallen into the fountain— a report the servants had already passed around themselves— and confessed that she would very much like to go and dry off. She felt Darcy’s warm gaze on her back as she left to go, but turned to say over her shoulder, “I still expect to close the ball with you, by the by! I shall not let a little water get in the way of it.”

“I shall look forward to it,” he replied, and smiled.


	19. In which all ends happily

Mrs. Pattinson did not manage to restore Elizabeth to the shining glory of her appearance at the start of the ball, but by building up the fire in Elizabeth’s room to dry the gown, exchanging shift, petticoat, shoes, gloves, etc. for fresh ones, and hiding the dampest part of Elizabeth’s hair by wrapping about her head a length of white gauze as a bandeau, she managed to hide most of the damage. Elizabeth’s wandering around the room humming to herself, laughing at nothing, and fits of dreamy distraction caused this good lady no little confusion. She and all the other servants had been under the impression that Lady Catherine and Mrs. Fitzwilliam had quarrelled so vehemently during the supper dance that Mrs. Fitzwilliam had gone walking in the garden to cool her temper; this information she tentatively passed onto Elizabeth, who replied, “Oh yes, I suppose I cannot deny that—but I cannot also deny a very happy outcome. I shall tell all anon, I promise, but I want so very much to go back down and dance as soon as I can; I have missed it so.”

“Of course ma’am—but where is your bracelet?” asked Mrs. Pattinson.

“Mr. Darcy has it, or had it,” said Elizabeth and then went hunting in the pockets of the coat Darcy had put over her shoulders. She passed over the bracelet and then looked hesitantly at her wedding ring. She had felt no guilt in accepting Darcy’s proposal; only a soaring joy, the equal of which she had only known once before, and for an identical cause. But, she thought, Richard had had Colonel Pascal before they had married; he would not begrudge her Mr. Darcy now their marriage was over. Indeed, he might even have been pleased by it.  

Mrs. Pattinson took certain inferences from this and asked, delicately, “Might I wish you joy, ma’am?”

Elizabeth flushed. “I hope you know I—I did love the colonel and was very happy with him—”

“Of course, ma’am,” said Mrs. Pattinson, handing over a fresh set of ball gloves. “And I think you shall be very happy with Mr. Darcy. A very different man from the colonel, ma’am, but a very fine man all the same, if you will excuse my saying so.”

Elizabeth laughed. “By all means! Wax eloquent on his virtues, Mrs. Pattinson; I shall speak only to beg you to continue.”

“I’m sure you could only find a finer man in regimentals,” said Mrs. Pattinson, which was so high a compliment from that lady, Elizabeth was moved to embrace her. Elizabeth went down all smiles, just in time for the last dance of the evening. The ballroom was less full, about a fifth of the guests having left to go to Barmote, and others having left out of exhaustion, or a wish of going before the wait for carriages grew too long. Elizabeth’s gaze went to Darcy as inexorably as the tide coming in; she saw him and went to him feeling buoyed and elated, with the giddy sensation, when they danced, that the room had no ceiling or floor. She was dizzy with love. Her happiness could not be contained, but bubbled over in conversation. Darcy’s own feelings were too strong to be easily expressed, especially in a ballroom, before strangers, but he went through the dance smiling, which was probably the first time he had ever done so.

When the dance ended a servant came to Elizabeth with a note from Colonels Dunne and Pascal, describing in four lines their progress at Barmote. There was enough time to scan this and pass the note to Darcy before the applause for the orchestra had ended.

“Before you all depart,” said Darcy, as the guests all began to move to go, “I beg a moment of your time. I have two items of news that I think are of note. The first— the explosion at Barmote has been successfully contained.” There was a general murmur of relief at this. “Colonel Dunne writes that so far there have been no deaths, and only a handful of men injured. A few of the outbuildings about the mine were obliterated but the fire did not spread from them to the village itself.”

The guests were in the habit of applauding and so did; several came forward to ask questions, for Barmote was not so near to their properties as to cause them to flee a ball early, but not so far as to leave them with no anxiety whatever. Darcy answered them as best he could, and it was quite five minutes before anyone recalled he had a second announcement.

Georgiana, arm-in-arm with Kitty, piped up, “Brother, did you not have a second announcement to make?” There was a particular air of excitement about her that made Elizabeth suspect Darcy had immediately run to his sister, after they had parted, wishing to share the joy of his engagement with all he held dear.  

“The second,” said Darcy, meeting Elizabeth’s eyes— and oh! There was so much of love in his expression, and how truly did so heartfelt a smile become him “— is a yet happier piece of news. I would like to announce my engagement to my cousin—”

Lady Catherine assumed an expression of great satisfaction.

“—Mrs. Fitzwilliam.”

Lady Catherine looked as if someone had hit her right between the eyes with a truncheon. Elizabeth would have liked to say she had not felt utterly triumphant, but she did. Darcy extended his left hand to Elizabeth, she took it. The congratulations flowed in with all the sincerity of neighbors of long standing wishing one of their own every happiness; Elizabeth quite lost sight of Lady Catherine, in the bustle in noise of so many good wishes, mixed with so many farewells and such confusion about whose carriage had arrived. When the last of the guests had departed, Georgiana and Kitty rushed to embrace their siblings at once, with overlapping cries of, “ _Finally_!” and “I am so happy!”

“What do you mean, finally?” asked Elizabeth, pulling back.

Kitty looked shifty and Georgiana turned bright red.

Darcy asked, sternly, “Georgiana?”

She hung her head and mumbled something indistinct.

Kitty translated, “Well, we knew you were a match since last summer. It has been some doing to get the two of you to realize it.”

“What?” asked Darcy. “Since last summer? How—”

“When we all got knocked over by that wave and you went into the sea,” said Georgiana, in an almost comprehensible murmur.

“A lot of mysteries have just been solved,” said Elizabeth. “I _think_ Mr. Darcy and I are… shall we say indebted to you for your services? In the matter of our being habitually locked into rooms, certainly, and most likely the cowslip wine—”

“Well I like that,” said Kitty indignantly. “Here we are, having united two soulmates, and done so for the first time, without anyone really helping us or giving us advice. The fact that we managed to bring the two of you together at all seemed to us horribly unlikely for at least half the year!”

Elizabeth would have scolded them for rather inefficient matchmaking, but Lady Catherine, noticing that only the family remained in the hall, chose then to make her entrance, and glided grandly down the staircase.

“Fitzwilliam Darcy,” she boomed out, Anne trailing behind her as a thin, red shadow, “a word, if you please?”

“I think you have had quite enough of those, madame,” said Darcy, dryly. “But permit me to ask a question that I think will spare us both some unnecessary argument. Is it not true that one ought to marry one’s match?”

“Yes, of course.”

“And is it not true that you know your true match because you bear that person’s name on your wrist, and that person bears yours on theirs?”

Kitty, seeing where this was going, helpfully undid the clasp of Elizabeth’s bracelet.

“Just so,” said Lady Catherine, eyes narrowing. “With first name matching to first name, and last name matching to last name, and so forth.”

Darcy raised his left arm and pulled down the sleeve of his coat, exposing the button at his cuff. Then then very deliberately undid the button on his cuff, arm still upraised. He caught Elizabeth’s eye with a look almost of playfulness.

Elizabeth hid a laugh behind her newly ungloved left hand. Darcy was enjoying this.

Lady Catherine greatly mistrusted this. “Fitzwilliam—”

“Yes, that’s what is on my wrist,” said Elizabeth holding out her own wrist.

“And mine,” said Darcy, holding out his, “says, ‘Elizabeth.’”

Lady Catherine turned a shade of puce Elizabeth privately thought would be a good color for the curtains in the east drawing room.

“It appears,” said Mr. Darcy, hugely enjoying this, “that Mrs. Fitzwilliam bears my first name, and I bear her first name.”

“I believe that may make us a match, Mr. Darcy,” said Elizabeth, in mock surprise.

“According to my aunt, it appears we are a _true_ match. We had better let the engagement stand.”

“Yes, we had better marry. It would not do to go against Lady Catherine’s advice.”

“After all I have done for you—” Lady Catherine began.

“And you have done _so much_ ,” said Elizabeth, pressing a hand to her heart. “You have been the means of uniting us, Lady Catherine! Without our conversation on the balcony, Mr. Darcy and I might never have come to realize we were a match.”

Lady Catherine glowered at them both, greatly displeased to have been so thoroughly outmaneuvered. But there were servants all about, being purposefully helpful about cleaning up (including several housemaids all dusting the same vase). She coldly informed all assembled that she, Anne, and Mrs. Jenkinson would be departing for Rosings in the morning. Elizabeth, Darcy, Georgiana, and Kitty were all concern, but did not press them to stay, and indeed, Darcy took a particular pleasure in asking the servants to begin preparing for Lady Catherine’s departure at once.

Lady Catherine swept off with a sense of offended dignity, muttering, “My brother will hear of this!”

“And so will Marjorie,” said Elizabeth, when Lady Catherine disappeared up the stairs. “It almost makes one sorry for Lady Catherine.”

“Really?” asked Kitty.

“ _Almost_.”

 

***

 

The Matlock Fitzwilliams duly arrived home from Tahiti and were descended upon at roughly the same time by Lady Catherine de Bourgh of Rosings Park and Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy of Pemberley. Darcy had the advantage of traveling on his own, and having already been in London, procuring a marriage license, when news of his uncle’s ship arriving in port reached him. He anticipated Lady Catherine by a day to quite good effect, according to a letter written by Marjorie Spencer Fitzwilliam, viscountess Stornoway, to her dear friend Miss Mary Crawford who, in turn, forwarded it to her good friend, Mrs. Elizabeth Bennet Fitzwilliam:

 

_Dear Mary,_

_We are all safely got back from Tahiti, and more importantly than surviving a transatlantic journey, have survived being on a small ship with each other for what feels like five hundred years. We no sooner take off our things to wish off the sea water when the butler announces_ _Cousin Darcy_ _is come to wait upon us. I was v much shocked, as you can imagine— he is generally so conscientious about being at Pemberley for the harvest he will not quit it until Michaelmas; and then too, both Lizzy and his friend Mr. Bingley are in Derbyshire, he has no particular draw to London except for us. Honoria and I agreed it a rather overactive sense of duty that caused him to wait upon Matlock like this, and got Dora and Julian to agree with us, but we were all admittedly feeling sick (from sea and of each other) and feeling v cynical about human nature. However, when we had all washed up and gone down to dinner Darcy was really and very sincerely happy. I am not sure I have ever seen him in better spirits. I feel rather touched by this shew of family feeling. Am a little surprised he did not bring G with him but he mentioned G, Lizzy, and Miss Bennet were at Pemberley with Mr. and Mrs. Bingley and might be coming to town soon. I do not entirely know what he means by this. Do they propose to come wait on us? Vastly but pointlessly civil if so. I know I do not have enough family feeling to travel from Derbyshire to London at the end of August, tho admittedly the heat here is_ _nothing_ _compared to Tahiti. The men are come back now and Julian looks more than usually confused— I must put down my pen for now to explain something to him._

 _Dear Mary— I feel I really ought to start a new letter and throw out the top half of this sheet for I have_ _such_ _news. Julian came to me and said, v uncomfortably, “Marjorie dear has Lizzy written to you?” I said she usually did, what was the matter (really fearing that she had been plunged into another trough of misery and could not be pulled out) but Darcy’s looks were too cheerful. If L was in the same state as she was this time last year, he would be v somber and grave. J looked even more uncomfortable and said he felt more than uncommonly stupid but really did not understand— Darcy was in such a good mood, J had joked that D must be in love. D smiled and said he was, and that as the lady was so good as to return his feelings, he expected to be married by the end of September. Glad tidings poured in— I think there was some reticence in asking if it was at true match, as we are all rather certain Darcy has Joan of Arc of Boadicea or the like on his wrist, and Matlock and J like Darcy too much to fault him for not marrying according to family tradition. J did ask the lady’s name and do you know who Darcy is planning to marry?_ _None but Lizzy!_

_You can imagine my astonishment at this, for Darcy has not the open manner, nor the playful, gentle goodhumor that I always thought Lizzy valued most about Richard. Darcy is a very good sort of man, intelligent and loyal and all— but not very much like Richard, except that they share a name (and apparently tastes). I really did not understand how Lizzy could accept Darcy, but then I recalled how v shaken she was after Waterloo and how good Darcy was to her, and with what tender solicitude he always attended her, and how much and how often she turned to him at first in distress and then in friendship— one with so wounded a heart and so warm and affectionate a temperament as our Lizzy could not help but be moved by such kindness, and from mutual sympathy to friendship to love there are no very great distances. Darcy confused me rather— I know both you and the Duke of Wellington hinted his interests lay in that direction but I admit I thought the unusual degree of concern he had for Lizzy and her grief was a way to avoid focusing on his own. I admit to being wrong. He goes about smiling. It is really very alarming. I must put down my pen and go manage Matlock. I do not think he will take much persuasion— he has always been at a loss at what to do with L and he has this belief that women cannot be happy without children. It is as nonsensical as a superstitious person believing that their shattering a mirror causes anything but a lot of work for the servants. But L’s marrying Darcy soothes both of Lord M’s worries, and conveniently keeps all the money and properties R left L within the family. I shall lean very heavily on Lord M’s aunt marrying Lord Ravenshaw after her first husband died, in order to bring Lord R, who is a not very political man who spends all his life putting on amateur theatricals, over to the Whigs. Sadly Darcy is already a Whig so we have not that excuse, but I think there is something in the properties staying within the family. More tomorrow._

_I pick up my pen again this morning with yet more news of the various entanglements of my relations. Darcy came to talk to me last night of Lady Catherine, who, if you can believe it, found a way to be_ _even more insufferable_ _than in the past! She appears to have invaded Pemberley, thrown a ball (which Darcy paid for, of course, even though he probably hated every minute of it), and insisted Darcy marry Anne. Quite obvious what choice makes in_ _that_ _case. Especially since both Anne and Lady C said some things about the rest of this family that would make Caro Lamb say, ‘hey now! That’s too harsh!’_

_Darcy told me what he had heard, and Lizzy sent me a very long letter about it all. Did you know, my dear, that Cousin Anne thinks herself the best of her generation? I shall shew you L’s letter when next you come visit. I was surprised Anne said nothing of Richard, but I suppose L looked so murderous at that point, Anne shut up; that or it was so bad L left it out. Lady C told L after this that L was keeping D too comfortable by living w him and running his household and all—D wld never marry while L was there, and L, having served her purpose by hiding half of R’s predilections, must now be cast from the family circle, for causing more problems than solving them. I really do believe D and L got engaged out of spite, to drive Ldy C from Pemberley, but then found that as their being married would not materially alter a pattern of life they had fallen into and rather enjoyed, went ahead with the engagement._

_More news! I really should just have four different letters to you. Lady C has deigned to visit us. Unfortunately for her, my dear Julian had another_ _Glenarvon_ _moment. He probably could have shrugged off Ldy C and Anne’s belief that he was dropped on the head as a child, but as the two of them dared call me conniving and our children brats, he barred them from the house unless they apologized. Of course they wouldn’t—not with all the servants purposefully hanging about—and he shouted a bit and ranted and raved about how the good of the bloodline means bringing in those to whom we are matched, Honoria came running in to support her brother, and Lord M came out of his study just in time to hear Ldy C unwisely attack Honoria. Now, we have been gone the past sixmonth, Ldy C could probably be excused for not realizing how materially Lord M’s opinion of Ldy H and Miss D has changed, in light of his actually bothering to spend time and get to know them, but she shld have realized after R’s death, Lrd M would positively explode if anyone accused him of not loving his children and ensuring that they had good, fulfilling lives with their soulmates. So, in short, there has been a break between the Matlock branch and the Rosings branch of the family. Happily we were awarded custody of the Pemberley branch._

 _Lrd M was sweet as a lamb abt D and L marrying after that (of the ba-ba type, not the_ _Glenarvon_ _writing type). I am happier w the idea of it too, esp. since Darcy rather quietly admitted to being in love with L and that being more motivation to marry than any desire to poke Ldy C in the eye metaphorically. I confess, I do not entirely understand how_ _his_ _affections came to be engaged. He disliked L so much when she was to marry Richard! He and Richard did not speak to each other for nearly two weeks! It was only with time that Darcy became accustomed to Lizzy, and I honestly thought that he only started liking her as a person when he saw how devastated she was at Richard’s loss, thus proving she was, in fact, Richard’s soulmate, and not a fortune hunter._

_How should Darcy, the high stickler, the stoic avoider of human emotion, whose one foray into romance was with Elizabeth Elliot the Unendurable [ink blot]_

_I am the stupidest creature on earth. I beg you will hit me upside the head when you next see yr oblivious frnd_

_MSF, Ldy Stwy_

 

_***_

 

About a week after Lady Stornoway wrote her letter, a rather large party came down from Derbyshire, consisting of Mr. and Mrs. Bingley, their daughter, Georgiana, Kitty, and Elizabeth. London had been agreed upon as the most convenient place to be married, as it would suit the travel needs of all. The Matlock branch had made it clear that though they were very happy Darcy and Elizabeth would marry they would all rather be captured by Jacobins and guillotined for being aristocrats than travel again. It was likewise convenient for the Bennets to come up. Kitty and Georgiana would be returning to Longbourn for the fall, while Darcy and Elizabeth traveled abroad. The newlyweds intended to journey to Italy (over land, at Elizabeth’s insistence), a place that neither had been, but both felt some curiosity in seeing. To Elizabeth the idea of crossing the Alps was nearly as much of an enticement as the Roman ruins, and though Darcy’s tastes tended towards the familiar, Rome, that dwelling place of Caesar and Cicero, was as familiar to him as it was to any other man who had been transformed into a proper gentleman through the crucible of Eton and Cambridge, and he wished very much to see that city.

Though Mr. and Mrs. Bingley considered it the most natural thing in the world for two people they held so close as Darcy and Elizabeth to marry, Mr. and Mrs. Bennet were very much confused. Upon their arrival in London, Mrs. Bennet was torn between praises of Darcy’s wealth, and loud exclamations of confusion as to _Elizabeth’s_ marrying him. Mr. Bennet was too mystified to even mock his wife on this subject, and drew Elizabeth aside to say, apprehensively, “Lizzy, my girl, are you sure you know what you are about? It is an unpleasant thing to be a widow, I know, and Mr. Darcy has been a good friend to you, but—”

“But, Papa,” said Elizabeth, “I did not think you were so firm a believer in soulmarks.”

“I am not,” said he, “indeed, I should be very pleased to hear that you had married in open defiance of them and chosen your second husband just to please yourself.”

“Then rejoice! For not only have I done so, I have chosen a man I like and esteem, and with whom I have every expectation of being very happy. It is a very settled thing between us, you know, that we shall be the happiest couple we know. Indeed, we are as agreed upon that point as we are about the provenance of our sugar.”

“But can you respect him, as you did your first husband?”

“Yes, very much so! Even when I disliked Mr. Darcy I still respected him as a man of ability; now, in addition to that I not only like him, but love him. And too—” She paused, unsure how serious to be with her father “—we both… there are certain circumstances we have both lived through that neither of us can forget, and that will keep us forever joined, in some respects. Even if we had not chosen to marry each other, we would always have been friends, I think, for having survived the aftermath of Waterloo together.”

Mr. Bennet looked searchingly at her, and said, “Well, Lizzy, you are five and twenty, and have married once already; you do not need my permission to marry now, but do assure me that you and Mr. Darcy have both put some thought into whether you should suit. You were very lucky with your first husband. I do not think I could bear to see you are miserable as I have been, when it comes to your choice of partner, especially after I have seen you truly happy.”

Elizabeth, after a moment’s thought, laid out the whole of her history with Mr. Darcy, (excluding, of course, their kissing forfeits). She spoke of the evolution of her own feelings; the gradual change which her estimation of him had undergone; her absolute certainty that his affection was not the work of a day, but had stood the test of several years, including many in which there had been absolutely no possibility of a return of his sentiments. And finally enumerating with energy all his good qualities, she did conquer her father’s incredulity, and reconcile him to the match.

“And here Kitty was telling me all about how you and Mr. Darcy were a match, and all the stratagems she employed to force the two of you to realize it,” said Mr. Bennet, dryly. “It did strike me as a touch too much Beaumarchais, but Kitty is a very new writer, and those just beginning to write are apt to plagiarize.”

Elizabeth blushingly confessed to being a match.

Mr. Bennet raised his eyebrows. “It seems some strange trick of the almighty, for you to have two perfect matches, when so many have none at all.”

“It is luck, I admit, but the more I think on it, the more I am sure it could be anyone’s lot. Jane is so common a name, Papa; you might have been very happy with any number of Janes. And did you not say your nursemaid Jane saved you when you were a baby?”

“That is all very true, my dear. Have you ever heard Voltaire’s letter to Emilie du Chatelet? ‘if I was not with you, my dear, I would no doubt be with someone else. But how nice that I have chosen you, and you have chosen me, instead of all those others.’”

“I suppose,” said Elizabeth, smiling, “I have merely been spoilt for choice.”

 

***

 

Though their engagement had led to a period of blissful playfulness, and a candor which allowed them to canvass even painful topics with relative ease, there was one point on which Elizabeth was a little reticent. One afternoon Elizabeth gave herself a mental shake, calling herself ridiculous, and sought out Darcy. The Earl had insisted she come back to Matlock House for the couple of days before she was married, to avoid any shadow of scandal, and as Darcy was busily and happily redoing his room to suit her, and transforming a nearby linen closet to ber her dressing room, and otherwise remodeling and redecorating his house to please her, it was not perfectly easy to find him. But she was eventually taken to the back garden, where Darcy was throwing what had once been a tennis ball and what was now mostly Newfoundland slobber. Every third time he threw it, Boatswain was prevailed upon to fetch it, which was quite good, as far as Boatswain’s usual record went.

Darcy lit up upon seeing her, and for several minutes Elizabeth was so overwhelmed by affection from both man and dog she forgot her errand.

“There is one point I should like to discuss with you, that I have not yet,” said Elizabeth. She pulled off her glove and then her wedding ring. She thought she might feel undressed without it, but noted, with some amusement that even without the ring itself, there was still a paler band about the base of left ring finger. “I should like a different band from you, if you are agreeable, and I should also like your advice on what to do with this one. I should like to keep it, if not wear it.”

Darcy, one hand still on Boatswain’s collar, in order to keep him from knocking over Elizabeth with the enthusiasm of his greeting, studied the slim gold band in her hand. “Elizabeth, I have no wish to rewrite or deny any part of your history. You were happily married once before, and I am not the sort of man to think that precludes your being happily married a second time— at least—“ with a glimmer of a smile “—I shall endeavor to make sure you are. If you care to wear it on your right hand I shall make no objection, or if you wish for me to procure a chain for you, so you might wear it as a necklace, it shall be done.”

“I should like a chain,” said Elizabeth, touched and gladdened by this response.

“I must ask, however, if this is the sort of style you prefer. I have never seen you wear any other rings.”

“Oh I am so often scrambling about, or in gloves, or in the stillroom I find rings inconvenient. I asked for something simple from Richard partly for practicality’s sake, partly in service of a romantic notion that I should have the same ring as my husband, and partly because I was afraid I was already costing too much. But I am really not the sort of woman to value her jewelry for its own sake. I like them for the events they commemorate or the love it symbolizes— and in that mindset, I shall take great joy in wearing anything you chuse for me, Darcy; I trust your taste and judgement.”

Elizabeth later doubted the wisdom of this, as Darcy had a steak of extravagance even greater than her first husband when it came to presents for his loved ones, and she was somewhat exasperated to be presented with a hoop ring made entirely of diamonds set in gold. The only ring she had seen at all similar to it had been on Queen Charlotte’s hand. She attempted to start a quarrel about it, as it cost more than any of her other pieces, but Darcy ended the argument as soon as it began with the halting confession, “I do not have the ease that some men do, in talking of what I feel; I cannot put into words the depth of the love I bear you. Any attempt I make at it sounds paltry to my own ear. I cannot think what it must sound like to yours. It is easier for me to give you tokens such as these. It still does not capture all I feel, but it does more than my awkward attempts at… I believe Bingey called it my searching for words of four syllables.”

“Ridiculous man,” teased Elizabeth, softening automatically but not wanting to lose the argument. “My dear Fitzwilliam, for one who claims he does not easily speak of his love, you certainly have done so eloquently enough to get me to stop quarreling with you—but now I know to treasure any gift of yours, I beg you will not make them all this expensive.”

Darcy smiled in such a way as to imply that they probably would be, but said merely, “I pray you will indulge me this once, at least. For many years it has seemed to me an impossible idea that we should be married; in the realization of such an unlooked for happiness, a little extravagance must surely be excused.”

Elizabeth complied.

 

***

 

The wedding itself was smaller than her first had been, partly out of a mural preference not to turn what to them was a moment of private happiness at the end of a very long journey into a public spectacle; and partly due to the time of the year in which it was being held. Most members of society were at hunting parties or at home gathering in the harvest. They had for some time thought the Earl of Matlock would be the highest ranking guest, until Wellington sent an unexpected note that he would be in London for about a week that September and would Mrs. Fitzwilliam be agreeable to his calling upon her?

Elizabeth somewhat impulsively invited him to her wedding, as it fell upon the first day of his visit, but not hearing from him, was a little astonished to see Wellington show up at the church just as she was entering it.

“Your Grace!” she exclaimed.

He took off his hat and pressing it to his heart as he bowed, exclaimed, “My dear Mrs. Fitzwilliam! I am glad to have arrived when I can still call you by that name. Pray let me escort you in.”

As Mrs. Bennet was near to fainting with astonishment at seeing the Duke of Wellington in the flesh, let alone bowing to her daughter, Mr. Bennet relinquished his daughter’s arm readily enough.

“Here, my dear,” said Wellington, tucking her hand in the crook of his arm, “wasn’t I telling you only a few months ago that you were too charming to stay long a widow? The only thing I can’t fathom is what the devil took your Cousin Darcy so long to marry you. Heavens, how these civilians will drag their feet.”

“A very kind interpretation of events, Your Grace,” said Elizabeth, laughing. “I was rather afraid I was too quick to leave off my blacks and I was very astonished to discover this August that Mr. Darcy was in love with me.”

“Dear girl, I could have told you that in February and saved you several months.”

“Your Grace, I was in mourning until June!”

“And it is now September. Several months, still.”

Though Darcy was not technically supposed to be waiting for her in the vestibule, he was, and was obviously not pleased to see Wellington. This amused His Grace terribly and after congratulating Darcy, ended with, “Pray allow me to kiss the bride for luck.”

Elizabeth was amused and laughingly offered her cheek. Wellington of course tipped her chin up with a forefinger and kissed her. She pulled back, a little started, with a half-laughing, half-censorious, “Your Grace!”

“It was really my last chance to get away with it, my dear,” he said, looking at Darcy with a gleam of quite wicked amusement.

Darcy was not one to display his affection before others— his fastidious, reserved soul shrank from public display of anything he felt— but he put an arm about Elizabeth’s waist and pointedly drew her closer. His expression seemed to say, ‘It certainly is.’ There was a gentleness and a power in the strength of his hold about her that Elizabeth could not help but find irresistibly attractive.

Wellington quirked a smile. “You know, I had been expecting to see your marriage announced in _The Times_ since about January. You are behindhand Mr. Darcy!”

“I think it came at just the right time,” protested Elizabeth, smoothing down her pelisse of pearl-colored striped lutestring, and its border of gold embroidery.

“Indeed, Madame?” His Grace asked.

“It came exactly when I was ready to accept it.”

Wellington sighed. “You are a damnably lucky dog, Mr. Darcy, and no mistake. Well, on you get.”

And on they went. The ceremony seemed to rush by for Elizabeth, and she had on a new ring and was in the vestry with a pen in her hand before she felt like she had even sufficient time to take in all the details of Darcy’s appearance that day. Jane and Bingley were repaying the favor of being wedding witnesses and were laughing and congratulating Darcy as Elizabeth stood with pen in hand, looking at the blank space where she would relinquish forever a signature she had not, until recently, ever expected to give up. She had liked being Mrs. Fitzwilliam, she thought, with a twinge of melancholy. It was a self she had put some work into creating; a self with which she had been well-pleased.

“Elizabeth?” Darcy asked, coming up to her.

That, at least was a constant; and when she turned to look up at Darcy, all melancholy faded into a rush of giddy pleasure. ‘To me,’ Darcy had said, ‘you have ever been Elizabeth.’ She signed ‘Elizabeth Fitzwilliam,’ for the last time. ‘I wonder who Elizabeth Darcy will be?’ she thought to herself, and shuffled through the nearest selection of selves in her mind, imagining them as dresses hung up on pegs, waiting for her to pull them down and put them on.

Elizabeth had the opportunity to try out the likeliest of these selves at the wedding breakfast—she endeavored to be clever, but gracious; to deploy all the skills she had learnt while part of the Earl of Matlock’s household, while holding resolutely to the cheerful adaptability that had been refined through several years of following the drum; to use her ease in company as a shield for her husband, who, though clearly trying, was not his best self before crowds. To Darcy’s credit (and, Elizabeth thought rather smugly, thanks to her influence), he was making an effort. He was the liberal and liberal-minded individual who deeply felt his responsibilities; the clever and well-read debater who delighted in lively conversation; the considerate gentleman, who, though not always at ease in company, at least made an intentional effort at the requisite social courtesies.

Though there seemed to be a sense of mild perplexity among the assembled guests that she and Darcy had chosen to marry each other, Elizabeth fancied that after seeing them together, most people went away satisfied. Elizabeth and Darcy had already been shaping themselves into better versions of themselves, under the others’ influence; to see them now together, and perfectly fitted, contented the curious. Darcy’s great-uncle the judge, and his daughter, Mrs. De Courcey, were of this camp, and the latter ended her congratulations and conversation by noting privately to Elizabeth that the Darcys had always been a quiet family; and she was amazed at how gregarious the Derbyshire branch had become.

“Really,” said Mrs. de Courcey, “I remember Fitzwilliam always roaming about the grounds of Pemberley, during family visits, with Tom following him silently about, petticoats muddy up to the knees.”

“Tom?” said Elizabeth, rather confused. “I am sorry; I thought you were an only child?”

“Oh! I am. We London Darcys are a small bunch.”

Elizabeth glanced towards the small knot of Darcy second cousins, trying to recall if any of them were named ‘Tom.’

Mrs. De Coursey followed the line of her gaze and stifled a laugh. “Of _course_ the Derbyshire branch never told you. No, no, Lake District Darcys are all George or Georgiana or Georgette, since their father had a habit of making unwise speculations and always relied on Uncle George of Pemberley to tow his barque back from Point Non-Plus. But don’t tell them I told you! They’d be all horribly embarrassed.”

“Imagine a Darcy being embarrassed,” said Elizabeth, drolly.

Mrs. De Coursey dimpled. “When Lady Anne gave us another Georgianna, Cousin Georgiana over there—” nodding at another Darcy cousin, trying to avoid conversation by the pianoforte “—was only three and had a vicious tantrum over having to share her name. ‘Why can’t she be named ‘Tom?’ she wailed. And it stuck. You wouldn’t think it to look at her now, but Tom— Miss Darcy of Pemberley, that is— was rather a tomboy when she was younger, since she would follow Fitzwilliam here, whether he wished it or no. Constantly up trees and on horses. Lady Anne threatened to breech her if she couldn’t keep from ripping up her skirts. Fortunately Tom took to music and switched from rolling down the hill at the back of my father’s house to playing the pianoforte and now she’s quite the little lady.”

Elizabeth could not keep from smiling. “I had no idea Georgiana spent most of her childhood being called ‘Tom!’”

“It’s a fact I am sure she and Fitzwilliam have tried very much to forget! Well, congratulations and all! I had better go and rescue my father; he’s been waylaid by that awful Mrs. Elliot.”

Darcy came over to Elizabeth, looking rather harassed by the cup of tea someone had given him and he had not wanted, nor had the social resources to turn down. Elizabeth took it from him with a reproachful, “You never told me Georgiana had a childhood nickname!”

“No?” He frowned and searched his memory. “Oh yes. The Darcy cousins all called her something my younger self found embarrassingly undignified. I never used it and encouraged everyone to stop by the time she was ten or so. What was it? Tom?”

“Tom,” said Elizabeth, pointedly, eyeing him over the rim of the tea cup. “A name that has _some significance_ to my sister Kitty.”

Darcy did not quite understand.

She tried a different approach. “My younger sister Kitty had a childhood nickname too.”

Darcy said, dryly, “Yes, Kitty.”

“Not exactly,” said Elizabeth, trying not to shew her excitement. “Kitty was a small and sickly baby. My father said she couldn’t bear all the syllables of ‘Catherine,’ or even ‘Kitty,’ so he called her ‘Kit’ up until she was about ten or so.”

Darcy put the pieces together much quicker than Elizabeth would have done (and admittedly, had done) in a parallel situation. “I wonder if we should alert Kit and Tom,” he said, musingly.

“We cannot begin our married life indebted to anyone,” said Elizabeth. “After all the services they have rendered us, we ought to do something… though, given how remarkably unsubtle _their_ attempts at matchmaking for us were—a fact that really does not reflect well on the persacaicty of either of us— I daresay we needn’t put ourselves out very much.” And, so saying, Elizabeth walked over to Kitty and Georgiana, who, as per usual, were talking together. After a little talk of the food laid out, Elizabeth said, “Kitty, I was thinking of when Uncle Gardiner was married, and he gave us each a cup of chocolate to drink at table. I felt very fine then. Do you remember it? I am not sure you do, for you were full young then. Papa was still calling you ‘Kit’ because he thought you weren’t large enough to bear a full ‘Kitty.’”

Georgiana froze and looked at Kitty with the startled aspect of a kitten facing an expereince far beyond its ken.

Elizabeth drove her elbow into Darcy’s side. He was even less subtle. “Georgiana, Mrs. De Coursey was just reminding me that you had a childhood nickname as well. Do you recall how everyone on father’s side of the family used to call you, ‘Tom?’”

It was now Kitty’s turn to be alarmed; she nearly upset her teacup and said, “You never told me that!” while turning indignantly to Georgiana.

“Fitzwilliam did not like it,” Georgiana protested weakly, “so I did not like it and so it—”

Kitty turned her indignation on Elizabeth. “Oh! How long have you known?”

“Thirty seconds,” said Elizabeth. “I am much prompter than you, Kitty dear. There is a very pretty little wilderness out back should the two of you require more privacy.” The two sisters fled, in a mix of incredulity and astonishment, trailing many variations of “you never said!” and “I never thought to say!”

“I did not anticipate this, but I am pleased there is no very great shake-up of our family circle,” said Darcy, smiling. He moved his hand slightly, so that his fingertips brushed a hanging ringlet; Elizabeth beamed up at him.

“Oh yes! I should be very happy to have the four of us perpetually at Pemberley. Especially as it will displease Lady Catherine.”

“Who is displeasing Lady Catherine?” asked Mary Crawford.

“Oh, every one of us,” replied Elizabeth. “Come sit, Mary! I rather owe _you_ my current felicity.”

“A fact that I am sure pleases your husband,” said Mary, taking a seat and raising her eyebrows at Mr. Darcy.

Darcy looked harrassed and excused himself to greet an old friend from Oxford who had just arrived.

“Well I shouldn’t choose him, but I suppose he will make you a very good sort of husband,” said Mary, watching Darcy go. “I hope he is as doting in private as he is formal in public. Very different sort of man from the colonel. I often wondered how the two of them could be blood relations.” She eyed Elizabeth and said, “I am told you are a match, by the by, to a man I more-or-less consider to be a very fussy Persian cat in a cravat, but I thought I ought to get your opinion on the subject.”

“I think I am,” said Elizabeth, “but I… it….” She struggled. She did not regret her choice, but its complications still weighed upon her.

“Well,” said Mary, after a moment, “I think _I_ had two soulmates, at the very least. We might have had a ménage-a-trois if the other two had been less ruined by conservatism.” She brightened suddenly. “May I make an introduction, by the by?”

“Yes, of course.”

Mary waved to a prettyish, very quiet woman in half- mourning, talking in a low voice to Miss Duncan. The woman came forward, a little tentatively.

“Lizzy,” said Mary, looking proud and pleased, “this is my partner, Fanny. Otherwise known as the Widow Bertram.”

Mrs. Bertram murmured a shy greeting. Elizabeth felt a stir of fellow feeling at the sight of the widow’s veil and dark purple gown, and said, “Mrs. Bertram, I congratulate you most sincerely. It is not an easy thing we do, but I think it is worth any particular side-eying from people who do not know how complicated life truly is.”

Mrs. Bertram blushed and said, quietly, “Yes— I— I was never one to be moved from my own ideas of right; I was just never— the uncle and aunt who raised me were very good but—“

“But they were the worst kind of Tories,” said Mary, affectionately adjusting a fold of Mrs. Bertram’s shawl. “Poor Fanny didn’t even know there could be female soulmates until Matlock’s di Rossi bill.”

Mrs. Bertram was a little overwhelmed by all the attention, and Elizabeth a little philosophically perplexed, and both escaped to the ladies’ retiring room. Instead of immediately heading back with Mrs. Bertram, however, Elizabeth wandered into the portrait hall. It was cool and deserted. The painted gazes of all those present only in paint, due to time or distance, seemed fixed upon viewers equally absent. Elizabeth paused before the most recent additions. She looked up upon the Vigee-Lebrun portrait of her and the colonel, feeling as if she was deliberately whacking a bruised shin against a fender, to make sure the hurt continued. It was still a good painting and still a good likeness, but Elizabeth had the thought, ‘the creature on the canvas there is more memory than reality; she is as effectively gone as the colonel.’

Under her pelisse of pearl-colored striped lutestring, Elizabeth had on a gown of jaconet muslin, decorated with the same golden embroidery in a wave pattern as her pelisse, and one the Elizabethan-esque ruff collars now in vogue. She undid the pearl button at the base of her throat and drew out a slender gold chain, upon which dangled her first wedding ring. Elizabeth studied it, her companion for many years, much battered and scratched, but much beloved for all that.

“It shall take some time to get used to your new position,” Elizabeth muttered to herself.

“Lizzy,” came Marjorie’s voice, in her usual tones of meticulously cultivated sweetness. “I thought I might find you here. Are you well?”

“Mostly,” said Elizabeth.

Marjorie approached, gorgeous in white Brussels lace and blue muslin, bearing two flutes of champagne. “Oh dear. You do not regret this morning’s choice already, do you?”

“No,” said Elizabeth, hesitatingly. “I have some very unworthy doubts I am ashamed to admit to, but they do not rise to the level of regret. Merely anxiety.”

“I cannot imagine Darcy is the easiest man to live with—“

“Oh, no! Not that. He is all consideration and goodness; he has his quirks, like anyone, and once one grows accustomed to the fact one ought not to talk to him before he’s had a cup of tea in the morning, and the like, he is remarkably easy to live with. It is only… suppose… I am only wondering about soulmates.”

“Not unexpectedly,” said Marjorie, offering the second glass.

Elizabeth took it and tried to marshal her thoughts into some kind of order. “I am little afraid Darcy will come to regret marrying me. ‘Elizabeth’ is so common a name and it… well, perhaps it is possible that what Darcy thought for the last five years is true. Namely, that Colonel Fitzwilliam and I were soulmates and by some trick of fate, or an unkind God, Darcy was mine but I was and am not his. Perhaps Darcy is meant for some other Elizabeth altogether.”

“And you… still believe in the Fitzwilliam nonsense about one true matches?”

“I think Darcy does. So far he has been remarkably good about my having been married before, but… will he resent me, do you think, for being wrong the first time, or not believing that I was wrong? I cannot bring myself to think it wrong I was married to Richard. I loved him very sincerely and did consider us a good match— even a true match. But I am rather sure Darcy and I are also a good match.”

“Even a true match,” quipped Marjorie, taking a thoughtful sip of champagne. “Oh, it is lovely not to have to deal with smugglers to get champagne once again. Hm. I doubt Darcy would resent you. He loved Richard and knew you were happy together; and I have seen nothing in him, either before your marriage or after that would suggest he thinks you chose wrongly at first, or even at all. You and Richard were a match in all the ways that mattered. And so you are with Darcy. In my Whiggish opinion, and in my official capacity as niece to the late Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire, I think you could have had a very nice ménage-a-trois together and all been perfectly happy that way. Mary was just mentioning how that might have solved her problems.”

Elizabeth was fairly scandalized by the idea and hurriedly changed the subject to, “But really, which Fitzwilliam does my mark refer to?”

“Would you like me to tell you what I think you would like to hear, or what I think?” Marjorie asked.

“The latter,” said Elizabeth. “I fancy you seldom say what you really think.”

Marjorie laughed. “I cannot contradict you. This is what I think: there is no way for me or anyone else to answer that question. Indeed, I do not think there is an objective answer _to_ your question.”

“All we can really know so the evidence of our senses?” Elizabeth asked, smiling. “I never thought you to cite Kant.”

“I do try and avoid such drastic measures if I can. All I mean is this. It is profoundly arrogant of us to think we, one singular family, on our tiny, damp little island, have somehow managed to hit upon the one and only explanation of soul marks, in open defiance to the rest of the world. How horribly, aggravatingly conceited! Even in England the idea of a One True Match is seen as a little absurd. My own family shakes their heads at the Fitzwilliams. So I don’t think it’s a worthwhile question to ask, ‘was this person whom I love my match, or is it this other person, whom I also love?’ You could invent tests or magnify the evidence of one over the other but in the end, the person judging the case, the person weighing the evidence, the person who will be the most affected by such a choice is _you_.”

There was not much comfort to take in this; only the reaffirmation that ambiguity was in many ways the defining feature of the human condition, a fact Elizabeth had grudgingly recognized the summer previous and always vaguely hoped would be disproved some day or other.  “What did you think I wished to hear?”

“Oh! That this only affirmed for me the Spencer line on women’s soulmarks. Elizabeth Fitzwilliam was hailed in the Commons and a major player in the introduction of the RAMC bill.”

“And now I am doomed to obscurity in Derbyshire?”

“Not if you don’t wish to be, but I hardly think your new husband will be tempted into becoming an MP or taking a position in a future cabinet. That and I am convinced myself that without really being aware of it, we have managed to establish something much greater than ourselves, which will quite outlive us. No matter what I accomplish later—“ and her tone implied this would be quite a lot “—some reference will always be made towards that bill.” Marjorie assumed a more flippant air as she said, “Or, my dearest former sister, perhaps Plato was right and it refers to the best friend you shall ever have in life. As a Fitzwilliam myself, I graciously accept the role. I shall toss Mary into the Thames, to cut down on the local competition.”

Elizabeth laughed and said, “Marjorie, you need not do that. That is very unfeeling to poor Mary. But… oh, I wish there was one, straightforward, objective answer to everything.”

“I am afraid there seldom is. We can only try and get as much information as we can before making a choice, and then trying to choose the kindest option.”

Elizabeth tucked away her necklace. “And in this case? I should hope I have. It is one that brings me great pleasure, at least.”

“I think you have. We must recall how necessary it is to be kind to oneself as well as to others. You and Darcy have been through a great deal, and it is a very good thing you will now go on being very kind to each other in an official capacity. Oh do drink your champagne, you make me feel like a dreadful Bacchante, with my near empty flute.”

“Shall we toast to something?”

“To the Fitzwilliams and their notions of soulmates!” said Marjorie, raising her glass.

“Thank God they’re wrong,” said Elizabeth, clinking her glass against Marjorie’s.

 

***

Elizabeth had once quite angrily informed Anne de Bourgh that whoever Mrs. Darcy might be, she would have claim to the title as one of the happiest women in the kingdom, and was delighted to find this true in ways that she would blush to explain explicitly. Darcy had not the easy playfulness that could fall swiftly into games of passion that Colonel Fitzwilliam had; his object was equally her pleasure, but his preference was for something slower and more serious, as if he would study her. There was a deep pleasure in study of something loved, Elizabeth discovered, and though Darcy confessed again he did not find it easy to speak his adoration, he shewed it most eloquently. And when she gained confidence enough to tease and provoke, his own pleasure was so evident it only increased hers.

The next morning she found herself enormously satisfied with her choice. Her only spot of unhappiness was that, as she already knew, Darcy was not a morning person. When she woke, bubbling over with good humor and high spirits, he demanded to know the time, groaned, and buried his face in her hair.

“It is not _that_ early,” she objected.

Darcy made a noise that perfectly expressed his disagreement.

“Oh come now.”

“Even for you, I shall not rise with a smile before it is even gone nine-o-clock,” he replied. As he then immediately went back to sleep and was insensible to all her attempts at persuasion, she got up herself and decided to tend to her correspondence.

 _My very dear Charlotte,_ she wrote,

_I hear from my parents that Lady Catherine has been as Pharaoh and driven you across not the Nile but the Thames and back into Hertfordshire. I am very sorry for it! I hope your daughter, at least, is happy to see her grandparents once more. I am told her grandparents are so pleased to see her they can talk of little else— or at least, my mother can talk of little else than your parents talking of little else._

_Mr. Darcy and I were married yesterday so you were wise not to be at Rosings… I cannot imagine Lady Catherine’s temper was bearable. I confess that though I do not like there to be any kind of breach within families, everyone in the Matlock branch has been so much easier and so much more cheerful with her gone. I daresay by the time I have a child she will be tolerably able to say something about apologies without actually making one herself— Darcy’s mother was her only sister, after all; I do not think she could long resist knowing Lady Anne’s grandchild. Though I am putting the cart so before the horse, the horse has only just been taken out of its stable. In reading this over I see that is a metaphor that makes no sense but I_ _was_ _married yesterday; you cannot expect much from your poor friend. Her head is turned by her new spouse, her mind still muddled with champagne. She is full of incoherent plans of future happiness. I will be shortly in Italy for a time, though we are to stop a little in Paris, so I may see all my military friends. I shall give you a list of inns if you will be so obliging to write me. I shall certainly write you, though I fear my pen will dwell more on the glory of my new husband than that of Italy. Regardless of all that, I am_

_Yours ever,_

Elizabeth looked at the hopeful, empty space at the bottom of the page. She did not quite know how to fill it.

Though Elizabeth took considerable pleasure in signing as ‘E.F. Darcy’ through the course of her marriage, through the presentation of the promised heir, spare, and little girl (though not precisely in that order), and ever after, the first time she had to sign as such, she felt a frisson of anxiety.

The desk she assumed to be hers, for it had upon it a vase of cowslips and a new inkstand, pot, and sander of Wedgwood porcelain, had been placed in front of one of the windows. Elizabeth reached out to the side with her pen and drew back one of the soft, white muslin curtains. It was idly done, to check the time without having to rise and locate her watch or Darcy’s, and sunlight crept into the room, careful and soft, as if on little cat feet. It seemed to curl up in her place on the bed, between the dent in the pillows and the mussed bed linens straggling over the counter pane, tucking itself neatly into the open curve of Darcy’s arm. In sleep, all tension left him, and one could see by contrast how stiffly he ordinarily carried himself; with what rigid self-control he moved so carefully and yet so masterfully through the world; what high guards he erected about himself. Now he lay open and trusting, his left arm still curved from holding her, his palm upturned and the fingers relaxed, as if in invitation. His soulmark seemed to curl protectively over the blue-green veins at his wrist, the loops of ‘Elizabeth’ like the fancy-work on a wrought-iron gate.

Elizabeth looked at him with a swell of love it felt impossible to contain. He stirred, curled his arm around the space she should have occupied and, finding if empty, woke and looked sleepily about. “Elizabeth?”

Her heart thrilled within her at the sound of her name. “Here, Fitzwilliam. I am writing a letter to Charlotte; I shall be only a moment. Are you missing me dreadfully?”

“Dreadfully,” he agreed, in a tone of drowsy affection. “But take your time, my dearest, loveliest Elizabeth.”

She looked at the blank space on the page and thought, ‘‘Whoever Elizabeth Darcy may be, she will surely never regret her choice; for she will love and be loved as long as she has claim to that name.’

The anxiety passed. Elizabeth took great satisfaction in writing,

_Yours ever,_

_E. F. Darcy_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ha, so, not a couple of days... more like a full week. But, after nearly a full year, this is done!!! Thank you to everyone who came along on this wild and crazy ride with me! I appreciate all of you so very much.

**Works inspired by this one:**

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